I talked about this a bit in the “Find Your Why” post from a few weeks ago, but I thought I’d go a little further in depth with it. Weight management is not my biggest “why” for exercising. In fact, it’s the only “why” I really feel I need to change. Basically, it comes down to having a life-long bad relationship with food. 

This relationship I have with food is odd. I don’t really actually care that much about food. I am not a foodie. It is not my life ambition to try all different kinds of food. I don’t run away from trying new things. It’s just not a priority. I enjoy food that tastes good. I absolutely appreciate that food is a huge part of culture, and I feel strongly that to experience a new culture, eating the food of that culture is a necessity, but in general, I think of food as fuel. I don’t think anything about what I’ve just described is odd. It’s not really “meal food,” as I realized I think of it, that’s the problem. What makes the relationship bad is that sweets, desserts, junk food, whatever you want to call it, has become much more like an addiction than a form of sustenance.

I love sweets. I always had room for dessert, no matter how full I felt after a meal. I had dessert after dinner every day and would usually manage to sneak sweets out of the pantry throughout the day as well. It is a miracle of science and a testament to my youthful metabolism that I wasn’t overweight. As I got to high school, I started thinking more about fueling for athletics, but I only thought of it in terms of calories, not quality of food. I would literally eat M&Ms and drink pop for lunch, and maybe I’d have some carrots to balance things out. One of my best friends used to tell me seriously that she thought I was going to develop diabetes. I had no idea what she was talking about. I was 16 and invincible.

When I got to college, fueling for exercise became a little more serious and necessary, so my sweets consumption came more in the form of rewards or emotional binges. I’ve gotten a little better since then, but I still crave sugar and rarely go a day without it. I am not trying to shame anyone, and I’m certainly not advocating for people to follow my eating habits. With most things, when I’m really up front about my flaws, I’m more willing to work on them.

I was at my worst in terms of running for weight management in my mid-twenties when I decided I was going to lose a whole bunch of weight but “do it the right way,” whatever that means. I tracked every calorie I ate on an app and made sure I burned more than that each day. It didn’t really matter to me what I was eating. Sometimes, I would basically starve myself early in the day so that I could eat a big, indulgent dessert later, and the app would confirm that this was ok because my calorie counter would break even. I was also miserable. I was obsessed with food, both what I was and wasn’t eating, and I felt hungry all the time.

Nowadays, I’m a little heavier than I want to be, but I’m generally happy about my body. I’m pretty strong and get do athletic things without hurting myself, which feels good. My goal is to be able to live a normal day without waiting for dessert time or telling myself I don’t need to eat sweets. Normal people can do this. I can do this, right?