It need not preoccupy your whole mind, your whole day. It need not feel like a prison of numbers. It is entirely possible to have a healthy relationship with food and be conscious of the calories you’re consuming. And though there exists a stigma with regard to counting calories- the associations with obsession, the restrictive connotations- I’ve owned this part of me. I have embraced the fact that for at least the near future, I will be consciously and unconsciously counting calories, even if my goals aren’t to lose weight.
FITDAY COM CALORIE COUNTER FULL
Because while I don’t need caloric permission to eat what I want (no one does), I’ll be eating said cupcake knowing full well that it fits into a balanced, healthy quota. I like knowing that if I’ve come to the end of the day and tallied that I’d only eaten 1600 calories of whole, pure foods, it’s perfectly fine to eat a cupcake. Now, even if I don’t set a limit on how many calories I want to consume I still can’t help knowing the number of calories in the foods I’m eating, and tallying up the day’s number. And while sticking to the number might have seemed like a burden at times, it served me well.
I created a routine around that very number. Through meticulous counting I was able to figure out the correct amount of nourishment I required. When I tallied up the calories I’d once eaten daily at 268lbs, it was somewhere up in the 3,000 range. My body, when I started, didn’t even know the meaning of self regulation. When I finally learned about nutrition and weight loss I kept a journal with an accurate count of everything I was putting into my body. And we can hopefully rest knowing that we’re doing our best. We stick to getting in bed at a certain hour, we set alarms for the next morning. And yes, sometimes we’re not exactly exhausted at the same time every night when we crawl under the covers, but still, we try to adhere to the schedule we’ve learned to work for us. Yes, our levels of tiredness vary day by day. So we stick to that, to the best of our abilities. Many of us, over the years, have discovered the number of hours per night that we require for our bodies to function optimally. Still, we value sleep, we know we need sleep. There is a world to navigate, a whole world of things to do that require working with and around. Ideally, we’d all just fall into bed when tired, and rise when sufficiently rested. I’d liken it to number of hours spent sleeping. It takes a long time to find that number. Despite the way it may seem to a non-counter, those who count calories have found a healthy number or range for their bodies. And it’s not the antithesis of intuition with regard to eating. I have a keen sense of when I should start eating and when I should stop eating.īut I, like lots of others, feel comfortable counting. I can pay attention to my internal dialogue with regard to a buffet, with regard to Thanksgiving feasting, with regard to White’s Bakery. Yes, I can now monitor how I feel in terms of hunger and fullness. Yes, over the past six years, I have found balance. But then I come to a place of honesty with myself. It helps to create a healthy relationship with food. And for those who eat this way, I imagine it’s a whole wide world of wonderful. The thing is, I know that eating in an intuitive way does exist. Or perhaps it sounds magical even if you aren’t, and you just think cupcakes and pie are two things that tend to trip the wires in your brain that tell you when you’ve had enough. Perhaps even more magical when you’re a former binge eater. I do.Įven after six years of maintaining a 135lb weight loss, I’ve come to know something about myself: I am a calorie counter.Įating intuitively, with no rules or quotas or numbers in mind, with only a keen observation of the natural hunger and fullness mechanisms we’re born with, it really and truly does sound magical.
I believe that eating can be an intuitive practice.
0 kommentar(er)
