Who Made Up These Food Rules Anyway??

Can we all just agree that we’ve made food weird AF?  Seriously though.  At some point, eating stopped being about eating.  Now it’s about whether we  “earned” it, were “good enough,” need to burn it off, or just need to start over Monday.

How the hell did we get here??

Just listen to how we talk about food.

“I was so bad this weekend.” Nope…ya just had pizza.

“I can’t eat that.” Can’t or don’t want to?

I have to be good today because I was terrible yesterday.

I meannnn, were ya actually terrible or did ya just eat some tacos??

Somewhere along the way we started acting like the food we eat says something about us.  But yall…broccoli doesn’t make you a better person and a brownie doesn’t turn you into a shitty one.

But that’s exactly how a lot of us talk.  And the crazy part is….it all sounds completely normal!!!

We’ve made up all these invisible food rules that I don’t remember signing off on.  Shit like:  earning dessert, no eating after 7p, bread is bad, fruit has too much sugar, vacation food don’t count and Monday is the official day to become a whole new human!!

Who came up with this shit?  Was there a meeting?

Here’s another one:  We celebrate with food.  Birthday?  Let’s eat.  Promotion? Let’s eat.  Holiday?  Absolutely lets go.  Girls’ night?  You already know.

And then the second it’s over, we spend the next week trying to undo all the celebrating.  We celebrate with food…and then punish ourselves for celebrating with food.  That’s kind of messed up when you stop and think about it.

Now before anybody reads this and decides we’re saying…Nutrition doesn’t matter....calm down.  It matters.  What you eat affects your energy, recovery, performance…basically everything and that’s not up for debate.

But that’s the actual problem. The problem is we’ve attached so much guilt to food that eating has turned into a full-time mental job.  Instead of asking “have I had enough protein today” or “am I actually hungry,” we’re over here wondering if we’ve earned dinner because we skipped the gym.  That shit’s wild.

We hear people say “I’ve been so good this week.”  Good at what?  Eating grilled chicken?  Because if grilled chicken makes you good, what does a cheeseburger make you? And no one is judging anyone but none of us were born thinking this way.  Toddlers don’t eat birthday cake and then ask if they should go for a run.  We learned this thought process somewhere.

The people with the healthiest relationships with food aren’t the ones who know the most about nutrition.  They’re the ones who stopped making every meal mean something.  They eat what makes them feel good most of the time.  They eat cake on their birthday and have family pizza night without doing cardio math afterwards.

Maybe instead of asking if food is “good” or “bad,” the better questions are…Does this help me feel good?  Does it support what I’m working towards most of the time?  Am I actually hungry? Am I enjoying it?

Maybe the healthiest thing some of us could do isn’t change what’s on our plate, but maybe changing the conversation we have with ourselves every time we sit down to eat.

Let’s just stop making it weird.