A Little Bit Wont Hurt?

If you happen to be the type of person who can eat what ever they want and look and feel awesome, please, have at it!

I’m not one of those people. I need to watch what I eat. I need to watch the ingredients and I need to watch the quantities.

Someone recently said to me, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just food.” Yeah well, it does matter. It matters a lot to me. Judging by the measurements on clients for almost 20 years, it matters for most too.

I wish I could eat whatever I wanted. I wish i didn’t have to count macros or watch calories. You think I don’t want to eat burgers and donuts every now and then? Of course I do. But there is a look I want a lot more. 30 seconds of “OMG Yummm” isn’t enough of a justification for me to eat food that will have me looking and feeling like crap.

Vain? Egotistical? Of course it is. So what. I want to look a certain way that makes me feel confident and comfortable within myself. Who doesn’t want to feel comfortable in their own skin? That confidence radiates from a person and flows through into everything they do in life. If that means watching what I eat, then so be it. 

And if you say, “Oh, but if you do it every now and then it wont hurt.” Of course it won’t hurt. It’s certainly not the end of the world and visually you are partially correct. Although over time with me thats not entirely true either. It catches up. 

But more importantly when I eat comfort food I generally feel like shit. Not mentally. Not from guilt. I feel ill. All of the junk they put in food these days plays havoc with my gut and the nauseous feeling that lasts for hours and sometimes days can carry over and negatively affect my training, which completely counters any enjoyment of experiencing the tastes of the food. 

I have been doing this for many years. I know that I’m not the genetically gifted type who can eat whatever they want. Thats just a reality I accepted many years ago.

If you have that friend who lives on chocolate cake and wine and still looks incredible. Or if you’re following that 20 something Instagrammer who came out of the womb with ripped abs or a butt thats harder than granite, by all means admire them and be jealous of their metabolisms. But if that person isn’t you, and food matters, take some time to learn what you can and cant do. Look, life is short. At the end of the day if you ate a deep fried steak, dripping in melted cheese, swimming in a pool of melted Oreos isn’t going to matter when you’re 80. You can still enjoy food. It doesn’t need to be looked upon solely as fuel and have the flavour profile of a cardboard box. But accepting that you’re weekly cheat meal or sneaky snacks might actually be doing more harm than good for your progress and more importantly, your mind, could be the first step in changing your eating habits  achieving what you set out to accomplish in the first place.