Nourishing

I had a lightbulb moment recently. I was listening to a podcast about parenting and the topic was food and toddlers and the battle of getting them to eat. They talked about intuitive eating and teaching our kids to listen to their hunger cues and not attach “good” or “bad” to specific foods.

Then I thought: Oh, I’ve done that recently with myself. In the almost year long journey of quitting keto, stopping the calorie counting and food measuring, I have changed my relationship with food.

I am slowly learning to eat without counting the calories in my head.

I also realized that I no longer have issues with having “trigger foods” in the house.

We have ice cream in the freezer and candy in the pantry. I eat a little bit once in awhile but often forget I have it. It’s no longer the gremlin in my mind whispering “there are cookies in there, you KNOW you want to eat all of them!”

This is huge. While I was losing weight, I had “will not eat/will not buy” foods. I stopped eating pizza. I didn’t drink alcohol. I didn’t have dessert in my house–ESPECIALLY ice cream or cookies or candy bars. I did not trust myself to eat in moderation. Once I lost the weight, I kind of kept doing that. I didn’t buy certain things. When I got in a relationship with Michael, one of the sticking points for us (and it’s been ongoing) was pizza. Pizza was a huge trigger food for me and it just so happens to be Michael’s favorite food. He wants to eat it often. I try to limit how often we get it. I’ve told him in the past that he should just get pizza at work for lunch to scratch that itch. I tried to limit how often we ordered pizza–once a month max.

But to finally ease up on these food rules is HUGE for me. We’ve gotten pizza twice in the last month. And I eat 2 or three pieces, depending on the size of the slices, and then stop eating. I don’t feel like I want to binge. I don’t even think about the fact that we got pizza and have leftovers…

A few months ago I got a message from an Instagram friend who asked me a question about a meal I posted in my stories. She said, “I can never tell if the meal you posted is yours or Logan’s.”

I kind of gasped like, Oh…yeah, I am STILL restricting. I am still eating very small portions. It was a pretty eye-opening moment for me and I reflected on it for awhile. Was I eating the portion sizes of a 5 year old boy?!?! Yeah. Sometimes I am.

Being pregnant this year, while I am trying to heal my relationship with food and exercise, has definitely been an interesting factor in the puzzle. The first trimester was hard for me, I was sick a lot, I had zero appetite and could only eat carbs. Which in the past would have sent me spinning into restriction and over-exercise because CARBS ARE BAD. But I tried to listen to my body and realize that this is what I could eat right now and not feel sick and THAT WAS OK. The second trimester has been a challenge with heartburn and realizing that eating small portions is the only thing I *can* do. My stomach just isn’t that big and it doesn’t take much to feel overfull.

But having that lightbulb moment was really encouraging for me and made me feel happy. Maybe I *am* healing, finally!