Eating for Your Mental Health

Ah, mental health. Something I’ve avoided my entire life until I hit a wall and realized I didn’t know who I was anymore. I’d lost all of my power, I didn’t know how to make friends, I’d shut off love, and I was seriously lacking communication skills.

All of those things could easily have their separate sub-article for me to talk to you about, but today, I’m sharing my journey of food. How I redefined it, looked at it, talked about it, and how I’m never stepping back into diet culture.

How Do You Define Food?

Eating addictions are no joke and though I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I had one, I did keep food my secret.

I grew up on diets like Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, raspberry ketone pills, the Insanity diet, using the MyFitnessPal app to track my calories, the Keto diet to lessen carbs, eating strictly vegetarian, strictly vegan, and then last but not least, portion control.

Telling you all of that made me lean back in my seat and take a deep breath.

That’s a lot of damage done to someone who is only a month shy of 30.

Because of these diet fads, I would find myself starving by the time everyone else in the house was asleep. I was an only child so it was pretty easy to learn how to be stealthy around the house. I remember the first time I formed my “food secret”.

I was 5 or 6 years old and woke up insanely early but didn’t want to wake my parents. I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge to see if there was anything I could find.

Snack Packs

I devoured the entire six-pack and lied about it to my parents when they asked where they’d all gone. Of course, they knew there wasn’t a tiger in the yard that needed food, and they let it slide.

But I had felt like I’d gotten away with the biggest secret. To my demise, this formed a habit.

It followed me into grade school, through college, and even afterward when I’d moved to Chattanooga, TN with a best friend and my now-girlfriend.

I was living with my (now) girlfriend and worked in a restaurant so I got home late while she worked from 7 am to 4 pm. I’d get home anywhere between 8 pm and 10 pm and if she was still up, I’d heat my dinner and we’d watch TV together.

However, once she went to bed and I was up watching Netflix, I’d sneak back downstairs and find whatever munchies I could. It gave me the thrill of my stealthy childhood self all over again. I’d hide them under my bed, go to sleep and once she was gone to work the next day, I’d return it to the cabinet or hide the empty chip bag in the trashcan where she wouldn’t see it.

This carried on when we moved to Iowa but I knew I needed to stop. I didn’t like having secrets. I didn’t want to view food as a secret anymore. I didn’t like the way it made me feel.

I felt gross, fat, and shameful.

So I knew I had to put a stop to it and get my shit together.

Curvy culture appreciation started booming during this time, it was now 2017, and seeing women shaped like me, gave me the boost I needed. But I wasn’t done with diet fads. I’d let my mom talk me into the Keto diet and tried it out with her. It absolutely killed my stomach.

A year later, I tried eating vegetarian to help me slowly transition into eating vegan.

I enjoyed eating vegetarian/vegan for a while. It taught me how to use certain foods as proteins other than meat, helped me to be a master of tofu, and inspired me to start cooking a multitude of different cuisines.

I also started going to the gym and on walks and taking care of myself better all around.

But the way I looked at food or talked about food still needed some improvement.

I’d gone from one extreme of secret bingeing food to completely hating it outside of my three meal-a-day ritual. Any snacks, sweets, etc. made me cringe and self-deprecate. I needed to find a happy medium.

I didn’t like defining food as “bad for me” or “cheat food”. I am a firm believer in redefining how we talk to ourselves. No longer using stupid, idiot, or bitch. Not out loud and not in our heads. The same goes for what we’re talking about, not just who. So I didn’t want to be eating “bad” food or feel like I was “cheating”.

Those words do not make me feel good or serve me any purpose.

So instead, I started calling food for what it was. Instead of, saying “I’ve worked out today so I get to have those chocolate-covered cherries as a cheat snack”, I’d just grab a handful because I like chocolate-covered cherries. Not the whole bag, just enough to curb my sweet tooth.

I don’t have an inspiring method of how I found that happy medium. I just knew I needed to love myself more. And I needed to stop guilting myself for what I put in my body.

I had to be more conscious about what I was putting in my body.

Being hungry doesn’t make me a bad person, but having control over what I put in my body makes me a person taking back the power of my mental health.

And ultimately, I love food. I love the colors, the flavors, the cultures, the fusions, the company to share it with, and the entertaining. I was so tired of avoiding one of the things I loved most.

I wasn’t just going to give in to another diet fad that would take all of that away from me.

However, I will say, portion control has helped. From all the secret late-night binges my actual stomach organ could use to be re-trained on what an actual portion size is. Not the All-American version.

I Tried Meal Kits

I tried Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, GreenChef, Dinnerly, and Everyplate. All were fun and fine and this isn’t going to be a review of what I thought about them, but they did help with portion control.

I no longer feel the need to eat 1.5 cups of rice as the base of my dish or half the box of pasta just to be full.

I can still eat fun and unique dishes while appreciating them and feeling satisfied.

I’m Still a Curvy Girl

I walk about 3 miles 5 days a week. I go to therapy. I’m learning to love my body and appreciate the foods I put in it.

I grew up in and out of phases of hating myself and though food wasn’t the only thing I needed to redefine to help my mental health, it was a part of it.

I’m done with diet culture, it serves me no purpose.

I love food, how I now define it, and also, how I don’t let it define me.

We’re all worth more than our vices.

Until next time,

Haley