I recently got married. Hooray! And the month of the wedding, especially right after...was party-time...excellent. My husband and I went to Chicago for our honeymoon because it’s the best place ever. One of the things we did, well pretty much all we did, was eat. It’s one of the reasons we fell in love. Our mutual adoration of food and all of its forms! Chicago is a great city to eat. So we ate.

That was October. It’s now the end of the holidays and about a week before Christmas, we both realized that since we went on our honeymoon...we had really been living it up in the eating department. Going out to eat constantly and eating whatever we wanted for basically two months straight. Both of us realized that we were feeling a bit low on energy and that we weren’t taking care of ourselves. I mean I hadn’t eaten leafy greens basically at all in those two months.

So for the first time in several years for me, we decided together, to go on the paleo diet. We thought it would be a good way to jump start our good eating habits. I had been on the paleo diet before, maybe 7 years earlier and I remembered being the thinnest I ever was at that time. So feeling a little garbage-y about myself, I agreed we should do it.

Over the course of maybe 5 days...I realized with a huge amount of certainty, that I was never going to go on a DIET again.

During my recent and very short stint eating paleo, I realized something I wish I had realized back in high school. Dieting...it made me REALLY unhappy. Over the span of 5 days...I felt like a 15 year old all over again...and not in a fun and youthful way.

It was feeling insecure. Feeling as though everyone thought I was gross. Thinking my NEW husband wasn’t attracted to me. Thinking, “I’m not worth a fuck because I’m a gigantic fat person with nothing to offer the world.” I was angry and unmotivated. Unable to sleep because I was anxious. Unable to work because I was not confident in myself. I was completely disconnected. All the years of yoga and meditation and self-love work...flew the fuck out the window.

The fifth day, my husband said something to me along the lines of, “hey let’s get you some food, you just seem really unhappy. You must be hungry.” And you know what? I WAS.

It’s not the food I was eating necessarily. In general, Paleo preaches a lot of really good behaviors. And I am certainly not hating on people who make a habit out of eating in a Paleo way. It was being on a diet. It was the mindset that accompanied being on a diet. It’s the reason, that diets don’t work. Because the mindset itself is counter productive to creating healthy habits. It’s not about eating well to feel good. It’s about eating in some way because you feel bad. That’s all a diet has ever been. It’s feeling that you don’t look or feel the way you’re SUPPOSED to. OR, it’s some other random person who shouldn’t matter, telling you you don’t look they way they think you should. So out of shame and out of negativity towards ourselves…we impose rules and restrictions on ourselves as a reaction to feeling badly.

It’s become an instinct at this point for many of us. My husband and I had been eating badly and feeling low on energy, but our instinct was to create this restrictive existence rather than to start learning better behaviors or eating to feel good. It’s a completely different mental state! And that’s also not to say I still didn’t need some veggies in my life after those last couple months. For sure, my body wanted some damn spinach already. But it became to clear to me, that the insecurity I have felt and fought against for most of my teenage and adult life, was a result of endless dieting and reinforced negative mental habits.

Through my yoga journey and with journaling and meditation, I have been able to really get away from those habits and those feelings. Though they may never be truly gone as is suggested to me by my recent experience.

It feels so much better to embrace your body than beat up on it!

Perhaps this sounds similar to something you may have experienced or are currently experiencing in your life? I wouldn’t be surprised! Like I said, we’ve basically been conditioned to solve health problems this way. It’s not the way though.

It’s time to start loving our bodies and eating to show it that we love it. Often, that’s eating lean meat, fruits and veggies. Sometime’s it’s eating everything in sight because you’re in Chicago and why wouldn’t you? I mean have you had a Chicago-style dog?! Or deep-dish pizza? Let’s get real, that shit makes me truly happy.

And why exist on this Earth to be unhappy?

If you’re unhappy, chances are you aren’t truly healthy anyways.

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