Seeds to Sprout: Checking Your Relationship with Food, Fitness & Your Body

Mini-podcast episode about how your relationship to yourself can show up in different aspects of your life.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi again. So I am just finishing up a meal and I was just really reflecting on how my relationship with food has changed over time. And I was really thinking about how healing my relationship with food has really been very similar to healing my relationship with myself. Because I remember in my early 20s, I really gave into the idea of restriction around food and being disciplined in order to achieve a particular physique and how that's prominent not just for females in terms of how we derive our worthiness in terms of how we look, but it's also something that plays out with males. And I think that is sometimes talked about a little bit less. So I guess with that, I really want to share, I would say, two themes with you. One around how my relationship with food looks like now, particularly in comparison to my early 20s, where I practiced quite a bit of restriction or the way that I was seeing it as discipline in order to live this like gym life and this fit life. And how I feel like I have a more balanced and nuanced and healthy relationship with food now because I was making some eggs with soiriso, and then I made myself a quesadilla on the side with some kimchi. And how looking at that now, that's such a balanced plate. And it has my fiber, it has my protein, it has my fats, it has my carbs in there, and I really see it as providing nutrients to my body and making sure that I have enough energy to carry me throughout the day. And on top of viewing it as energy, thinking about enjoying the actual meal. So all of the things that I just mentioned are flavors that I enjoy or things that I grew up eating that I have a sense of comfort with, which except for kimchi, which I learned about in the more recent years. And those things just seem and they feel so much more holistic and balanced and joyous. And that's the type of relationship that we should all have with food. Because going back again to my early 20s, especially because I really caved into this idea of kind of that like gym life, that fit life. And I was looking at food in a very almost one-dimensional way. So mostly looking at it through its macronutrients, like the proteins, the fats, the carbs, and what are the things to make my workout the most efficient. And along with that, there was quite a bit of restriction of the foods, but also restriction in that sense of enjoyment. Because I wasn't necessarily allowing myself to practice that nuance. And I think one of the things I have come across in the more recent years is this idea of intuitive eating and how it goes back to again to what I mentioned in another episode, tuning into yourself and noticing what is it that your body is needing. Are you particularly more hungry on one day over another? Are you feeling less hungry at certain times of the day or on certain days? Because that's okay too. You don't have to force yourself to eat all of this food because gym and diet culture is telling you that you have to meet certain macros, but it's more about listening to your body and what is it that it's needing. And I think that's such a healthier way to be looking at food and having that relationship with food, which kind of brings me to the second thing that I was really thinking about is just how deep diet and gym culture infiltrated many of our lives. And to some extent, it sold us this lie that our worthiness was based off of how we look. Because many people, including myself, we were trying to obtain a particular physique when deep down it was rooted out of a sense of trying to feel worthy. Because many of us grew up at a time where our society was telling us that we had to have a particular physique, which typically was like thinness for women and being bulky for guys, and how that's kind of bullshit. The thing is that physical attractiveness is important when it comes time to romantic relationships because we have to obviously be physically attracted to the other partner, but I think that there is this layer of just complete and utter nonsense that we came to understand of what exactly physical attractiveness is. And it's complete nonsense to think that we need to have a particular physique either to obtain a romantic partner or to feel worthy enough to take up space or to feel worthy enough in general. And one of the things that's interesting is because I saw a video recently of a guy that was pretty bulky, he was jacked, and it seemed like he was having issues in his relationships, and he was saying, like, wait, if I'm so fit, why can I still not get a girlfriend? And I think that just really highlights how we didn't realize that we were absorbing all of these messages from society of what being fit or bulky or skinny or toned or whatever we're going to get us, we're actually going to provide to us. And yeah, I think that's something that we need to just be untangling and getting rid of some of those garbage beliefs because I think that's a sad way to go about life of thinking that you need to reach a certain body physique in order to feel worthy, worthy of yourself, worthy of taking up space, worthy of a relationship. So yeah, I'm curious, what does your current relationship with food look like? What does your current relationship with your own body and what you expect it to look like? How does that feel for you? Does it feel good? Or are those things being driven by what society and mainstream culture has repeated over and over again on social media or on the TV or in celebrity culture? So I'll leave you with that as some seeds to sprout to your thinking. Okay, bye.