What are your best healthy eating habits?
Crazy as this sounds, eating is actually my healthiest eating habit.
Before pregnancy and motherhood, I had been starving myself since high school. Middle school, if I’m being completely honest.
For a long time, I ate one meal a day. Once I started working and dating, I did start eating more because, well, dates involve food, and you kind of have to eat lunch when you’re working. But on my days off, I could easily stay in bed all day and not eat until around 6 p.m. I would actually get physically sick if I tried to eat before 10:30 a.m. on any given day.
Then there was dating, eating out all the time, and eventually moving in together. Hector and I were too lazy to cook, so fast food became a regular part of our lives. I went from being a 120-pound vegan with incredibly poor eating habits to almost 200 pounds and medically considered obese within about five years because my relationship with food had changed so drastically.
Then I got pregnant, and suddenly I had to force myself to eat. Add pregnancy cravings, food aversions, and all the other weirdness that comes with growing a human, and food became something I had to consciously think about.
And honestly? Between pregnancy and now postpartum, I have probably had 1,000% more cooked meals than I ever used to. I actually learned how to start eating at home so much more, and I’m genuinely grateful for that.
But now I’m back to barely eating again.
I have to force myself to eat, and it doesn’t help that I get up around noon. So breakfast is basically lunch, and most days I only eat that one time. Then, around 7 p.m., I have to remind myself to eat again.
I’ve realized that I actually have to give myself permission to eat.
I got so used to starving myself and treating food like something I had to restrict, control, or earn that eating doesn’t always come naturally to me. Sometimes I literally have to remind myself that I’m allowed to eat. That I need to eat. That I don’t have to feel guilty for feeding myself.
And now I’m at a point where I really want to reset my relationship with food again.
I want to take a break from fast food, sugar, coffee, and energy drinks and focus more on real, nourishing meals. Not because I want to restrict myself or starve myself again, but because I genuinely want to feel better and learn how to properly nourish my body.
I don’t want another diet. I don’t want another set of rules about what I can and can’t eat. I want to figure out how to feed myself consistently without turning food into something I have to fear, earn, or obsess over.
It’s honestly wild looking back at how complicated my relationship with food has been for most of my life.
I’m still trying to unlearn so many of those habits and figure out what it actually looks like to nourish myself. Apparently, after all these years, the revolutionary concept I’m working toward is simply eating.
