Is It Healthy To Always Eat Healthy?

Oct 31, 2011 by

Is It Good To Eat Healthy All Time

 

I’ve been contemplating to write on this topic for quite some time now. There are a lot of mixed opinions out there about this topic, – eating healthy all the time without taking a break. Some people believe that it is NOT OK to give your self a break and give into some not so healthy food choices, because it can create further cravings and mess up their goals. I would like to share some of my own opinions and experiences with always eating healthy without taking a break.

Let’s start off by saying, I am a natural born freak of healthy food. I’ve been this way since I can remember. But over the past year and a half or so I’ve noticed my self going a bit extreme when it comes to eating right all the time. I thought the more I eat this way, the more my mind and body will get use to this way of eating and I will never want to eat any other type of food. And for a while this was true, it started to become very natural and I stopped thinking about my Nutella and cake frosting eating days. I felt great all the time and even if there was a little bit of temptation and I wanted to take a little break, I kept my will power strong and said NO. I worked out 5 days a week on point, and I ate tons of veggies, lean meat and protein shakes, ( and of course fruit and natural peanut butter but that I am never giving up :P, but it’s not junk food anyway ).

The funny thing about all this, is that my husband noticed that I was going all freakish for a while and he told me to be careful and that it is going to back fire on me if I don’t slow down. I didn’t listen of course because I wasn’t’ even craving junk food, what can possible happen?

Time went by, I got into a pretty good shape and my body fat percentage was very low, I became extremely lean ( which was probably a bit too much ), I wasn’t trying to achieve that look, it just happened because I was eating so well and exercising so much.

I stayed disciplined for month’s.  And then one morning it just  hit me. I didn’t know where it came from, one morning I just woke up and I felt possessed, I was craving sugar. And it wasn’t one of those I am craving a little sugar kind of things, it was like give me a whole cake right now or I will strangle something, LOL.

I ignored that craving completely, and I though my mind was just playing tricks on my. I stayed focused, by doing everything possible to distract my self from thinking about cake frosting. Then I found my self mindlessly eating foods that I normally don’t eat, like peanuts ( I always loved peanut butter, but I always hated peanuts, don’t ask why ). But here I was eating peanuts, bags and bags of peanuts. I just kept going back to the store buying those big bags of peanuts that you have to peel and eating them obsessively.

I felt hungry all the time, and all I wanted to do was not work out, and just eat peanuts ( this never happened to me before, because I love working out ). Then even worst cravings started to attack me, the craving for cake frosting was growing by the minute. I kept suppressing them over and over until I became obsessed, I even saw my self eating cake in my dreams ( how sick is this ).

This was a person I didn’t recognize. I felt like a cake maniac. So eventually I had to go and buy my self a cinnamon roll with frosting and the worst part was that I settled for one of those convenient stores cinnamon rolls ( those are pretty gross, but if you are desperate they seem like the best thing in the world ).

I wanted to slap my self, I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. I would wake up in the middle of the night wanting cake frosting, and it made me feel guilty.

My husband said ” I told you so! “. You need a break from eating healthy, you have to always give your self a break even if you might not think that you want one or need one. Sooner or later it will catch up to you, and when it does you will eat a lot more than you would of if you did take that break.

As much as I tried to fight it, it did caught up to me, at first I just resisted and tried to clean up my diet even more, and it worked for 2 weeks, but then I just started to get depresses and miserable, so I just said ” what da heck, I don’t want to torture my self like this. If my body is craving this, I will give into those cravings with peace, because I knew it was the only way for them to go away “.

Now don’t get me wrong, giving in to your cravings doesn’t mean you can run free and enjoy a box of crispy creme doughnuts every day. But what I did was just eat all the nuts I craved and a cinnamon roll ( I can’t eat more than one anyway ), or a chocolate chip cookie if I craved it.

After two weeks ( it was a good run 😉 ) I felt sick of cinnamon rolls, peanuts and cookies. I was starting to miss my spinach smoothies again.  I got back on track and it wasn’t very hard, because I let my self have what I felt like I really needed, and once I got it out of my system I was able to stabilize my self really fast, and I took away a great lesson.

So the conclusion to all of this long spill is this: Don’t obsess with eating healthy all the time, give your body and mind a break.  You don’t need to feel guilty if you don’t always eat a super clean diet, in the long run it will create a much healthier outcome as well as much healthier relationship with food.

 

What do you think?  What are your experiences with food cravings?

 
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