HONESTY HOUR: ON DIET CULTURE

Honesty hour is a monthly feature where I take a break from the happy stuff and get real about something in my life. This is as real as it gets.

I debated on if I should write this before or after I posted about how I lost the weight I've been losing and when I decided after it allowed me to start with the phrase, "as I'm writing this, I'm on hour sixteen of my fast, I know deep down I'm not hungry, but there is part of a pie in our fridge, and I really fucking want to eat it."

I'm drinking a glass of water and doing something else instead of eating that pie for two reasons, one, I know I'm not showing any actual physical hunger cues, and two, that one piece of pie has like five-hundred calories in it. I don't count calories but I'd be lying if I said that I don't tally them for each day, I don't write them down and I honestly don't know exactly how many I had yesterday, I'm lying. Yesterday I did a 24-hour-fast and then had an extra large meal after. Within my guidelines of course.

But honestly, the day before that? I don't know how many I ate and I don't want to know. I like when I just focus on one day at a time and honestly I could work that pie into my calories but I'm too focused on trying to get correct nutritious foods in during my eating periods.

I try not to bargain with myself for food either so even though today is a work-out day and I could calculate the calories, I promised myself I wouldn't obsess that much about it, but telling my brain not to obsess is hard not just because I have OCD, but the more I look around the entire world is set up to tell you that being skinny is the answer.

The more that I look around and absorb the fucked up shit that I see everywhere that is practically preaching diets to elementary school children makes me sick. I hate it when I see pro-keto people villanizing carbs, when if you know basic biology you know carbs are basically life. It is so wild and unnecessarily apeshit out there. Honestly, if more people would drink more water, eat less processed foods, and  practiced a little more acceptance of themselves maybe we would have a lot less preteen girls needing treatment for eating disorders.

Am I stoked to be back to the size I was in the military? Yeah, but don't for one second think that my self worth is tied to what size I am. I loved myself then and I love myself now. I loved myself and that's why I wanted to start eating better and drinking water, and exercising! Don't let society tell you that you have to look a certain way.

I went to check my BMI and it said I needed to lose like 25 more lbs to be healthy, but I like the way I look right now! There is a whole section of people on Instagram who make money telling people that they need to be on a diet! People who go from being obese and obsessed with eating to skinny(sometimes only skinny-ish!) and obsessed with monitoring the food that goes in their mouth and overexercising. That is just as disordered as being obese but they are skinny so we tell them they are okay...?

Diet culture is so fucked up, I just don't want anyone to think that I was encouraging it with my post - I'm firmly against it! I do however advocate for people to make lifestyle changes in close relationship with their doctor. If you are serious about losing some weight, go to your doctor! That's what I did! She was able to offer some simple solutions at first for me to try before I dove in too deep. Then she monitored my progress, and still does to make sure I'm losing weight the healthy way!

Just one more thing, be careful who you admire, not everyone in the healthy living/ weight loss community can be trusted to provide helpful advice. Just because they lost the weight doesn't mean they lost it in a healthy way! Some behavior got them to 500 lbs, just because they lost 320 lbs doesn't make them a weight loss expert. It just means they had more to lose!