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Thread: bad relinship with food

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    God/dess krchab99's Avatar
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    Default bad relinship with food

    Help dose anyone have this problem I don't have an eating disorder or anything but I don't understand how to use food properly. I am traing now with diet and exercise to get back to normal after a baby. When I diet i devlope the idea that food is the enemy and i should just avoide it. I know this the wrong approche for a variaty of reasons but how dose someone get past this idea. I have been extremly succesful at cutting my calories down 1,000 a day but some times I do even less then that for fear not choosing the right food there are so maney differnt ideas of whats right to eat and not and how many calores and fat grams and sugar I Just can't figure out what to do. So all food seems scarey and off limits and end up just not eating becuse i am lost in a sea of diet adivice. Help.
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    Default Re: bad relinship with food

    Food is not the enemy! In fact, if you avoid it, your body will go into starvation mode and you will actually gain more weight. Remember this when you want to avoid food.
    Even if you eat a light meal, it's better than skipping them.
    You can look up some info on nutrition on the internet-what is always good is leafy greens, whole grains, healthy sources of protein like baked fish, tofu, lentils/beans.

    Try to stay away from processed foods/sugar and you should be fine.

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    Default Re: bad relinship with food

    Food is good. I used to be sorta like you all lost in the sea of eating whats good for you. The best thing you can do is educated yourself on healthy foods. Grab a book, read online (good site for that is www.bodybuilding.com) or even college nutrition books are good.
    By educating yourself you have the resources not to fall back into your old eating habits.
    Also a great book I read was The Body Sulpting Bible for Women.
    you live like an ivy vine
    you can only survive by clinging onto trees
    that's your flaw
    put down some roots so you can stand on your own
    -Kenpachi



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    Veteran Member bella du jour's Avatar
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    Default Re: bad relinship with food

    KrChab99,

    Please read this, I hope it helps.

    Your post is very alarming, because seeing food as the enemy is the perfect set-up for a serious eating disorder. It may seem to you that the reason you feel "fat" is because the food you eat makes you that way, but this is not the case.

    For one thing you do not want to cut your calories that low, anything under 1200 is technically a starvation diet as defined by the United Nations, and considered inhumane. A starving body is a body that is disrespected and abused, and it will not do what you want it to do, ie, make you happy.

    Another reason to avoid cutting your calories so low is that your body WILL adjust to this new, lower intake by lowering your metabolism. The body's ability to "economize" its use of calories by decreasing the ammount of food needed to maintain body weight/function is what helped our ancestors survive times of famine.

    If a 140lb woman who normally eats 2000-1800 cals a day suddenly starts eating 1000 cals a day, her body will respond initially by losing water and some fat, but quickly re-adjust it's need for energy (aka food aka calories) so that it needs only 1000 cals to maintain basic functioning. It does this by losing muscle mass and lowering its metabolism. You will lose weight, but it comes at a cost to your health.

    Functions your body considers essential will be allocated resources (energy); other functions may decrease or stop. If the body stays in this state for long menstrual cycles can stop (putting the body into an early state of menopause- yuck!) which means that there is no longer enough estrogen to store much needed calcium. Without this calcium bones can become brittle, leading to fractures and a whole host of other problems. In addition to this, the brain may experience shrinkage due to insufficient fat intake, hair and nails become weak and brittle, poor nutrition can lead to electrolyte imbalances in the blood which develop into heart problems.... and so on and so forth.

    It's really very serious, eating disorders are the most deadly of all pyscological illnesses. Don't fall down this slippery slope because healing the mind and the body is a long and unhappy process - and the alternative is death!

    Rather than follow the path you are on, I would suggest thinking about food not as the enemy but as something that you cannot live without. Food is fuel for living and staying healthy - and with a new baby you can't afford to become ill.

    If you are concerned about your weight, try eating at least a full 1500 calories every day. Not so suprisingly, many of the foods that are better for you nutritionally (whole grains, leafy greens, lean meat) are low in calories yet make you feel full longer. Foods like refined wheat, soda, cookies and pizza pack far more calories, fewer nutrients, and will leave you feeling hungrier (which makes you eat more of them, which makes you fat)!

    Try to make sure that you satisfy your hunger with healthy foods (like oatmeal or broiled salmon) and then let yourself have a small treat every so often so that you don't feel deprived. Feeling deprived will cause you to continue seeing some foods as bad and some as good, when no food is innately good or bad in itself; it's just that some foods should be eaten in smaller quantities than others because they have less nutritional value. Depriving yourself can lead to binging, and worse, bulimia.

    Once you have begun eating healthy you can help raise your metabolism (increasing the number of calories your body needs each day) by exercising and building muscle. If you are dancing, you probably get plenty of low-impact aerobic exercise already and that's great. In order to give yourself a boost try weight lifting as well. This will NOT give you big bulky arms and legs (not unless you're injecting male hormones into your body and eating creatine 3 times a day) but it will change your bodies ratio of fat to muscle. The thing about muscle is that not only looks better than fat (and toned muscles give the appearance of having lost weight, since rather than hanging out all flabby they stay tight and firm) but it burns more calories than fat, raising your basal metabolism (the ammount of energy needed by your body simply to survive, ie, the calories burnt while you sleep).

    If you build a healthier relationship with food and exercise to boost your metabolism you will definitely see improvement - I only caution that you have to be patient. One of the reasons you don't want to eat 1000 cal/day is that when your metabolism drops low to compensate for this, it will not jump right back up to a healthy level once you start eating more. This means you could actually gain weight eating 1500 cals/day, (whereas a healthy woman eating a normal diet would be losing weight at that level). Dont worry though, this phase will not last forever, eventually your metabolism will readjust itself. I was once eating far less than 1000 cals a day ... and as I went up to 1200 and 1500 and eventually 1800 cals I gained weight at every step. I gained the weight I needed, and then I gained some more. My body was being smart in it's own way and bulking me up to prepare for another "famine".

    Eventually I was able to stop counting calories all together, and stop seeing food as the enemy. Before I was finally able to be happy I had to give mysefl the freedom to eat what i wanted, when I wanted... but I never forgot the nutritional guidelines I learned during my recovery. I continued eating healthy meals and exercising, and eventually my weight leveled off at a reasonable level, but heavier than I wanted to be. Fortunately, as my body became healthier, I was able to improve my performance at the gym, which in turn boosted my metabolism further. After time, with exercise and healthy eating, my body gave up the extra weight it had gained and I was happy with myself.

    Now I can eat what I want, but always within reason. If I had to guess, I'd say that I consume between 1700-2400 cals a day (some days more than other for sure!). I have a moderate work out 4-5 times a week, and am in the best physical shape of my life.

    If I hadnt developed an eating disorder years and years ago I could have had this body (and this happiness) years ago, but unfortunately I had to spend a large chunk of my life recovering from the damage done to my body and my mind. Instead I was unhappy and unhealthy.

    I hope this post helps you understand everything that can go wrong when you go down this path, it caused a lot of heartbreak and unhappiness for me and took years to straighten out. I wish I had been able to make good choices right from the start, but I was impatient and in denial about how much damage I was doing to myself.

    Good luck!

    *hugs*

    Bella

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