How many minutes have your spent analyzing your calories? Or carbs, or fat, or protein?
How many hours have you spent analyzing how “bad” or “good” you were at the meal you just ate? Or planning ahead to your next meal?
On one hand, this is hard work.
And yet, I also think it’s easy. It’s what we’ve been doing for years. It’s a well-worn path, one that’s all over TV and the nutrition section of your bookstore.
The hard work is stepping away from the drama of I’ll-put-pre-portioned-chicken-and-vegetables-in-tupperwares-for-the-next-week-to-make-up-for-the-Oreos-I-just-ate.
The hard work is asking, “wait, why do I eat so often when I’m not even hungry?”
Many of us don’t identify as “emotional eaters.” We don’t see the connection between our eating and something deeper — something that might have to do with our anxieties, our fears, our frustrations, our relationships. That’s other people, not us.
And yet, “I-ate-half-a-box-of-Oreos-and-feel-terrible” is not a problem that calorie counting, or meal planning, can solve. We’ve made meal plans before…and eaten half the box of Oreos anyway.
The hard work is pulling ourselves away from the drama of food and portions and calories, and looking deeply at our whole selves. This is a level of insight that many of us — despite hundreds or even thousands of hours thinking about our “eating” — may have never achieved.
And it’s because it’s genuinely hard. The connection between our eating and the rest of our lives can be complex and nuanced. Looking at it can bring up a lot of painful feelings, and take more energy than we expect.
(This, of course, is the reason why I coach and facilitate groups on this topic. It can be so helpful to get support on these issues — here’s some ways to work with me, if you’d like).
But the first step is to acknowledge:
Getting caught up in the drama of points and macros and calories and meal planning intermittent fasting windows is easy.
Going deep — really understanding why we eat the way we do — that’s what is hard and complex.
It’s also really, really worth doing.
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