Blurred Lines

Unlike Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, I’m not talking about sexual harassment here. I’m talking about the line between healthy and unhealthy eating habits.

Where is the line between ‘life is short, eat the cake’ and over-indulging? Or between following a healthy diet and becoming obsessed?

To me, unhealthy eating is not about what you eat, it’s about your habits and your relationship with food. You can eat salads all day long but if you worry about letting other people cook your dinner and panic about the number of calories in toothpaste, it’s not healthy. On the other side of the coin, if you don’t have a care in the world and never consider the effect your diet has on your health, that’s not healthy either. Over-eating, not considering the nutritional value of your food, eating out of boredom and emotional eating are also unhealthy eating habits. It’s a spectrum with two extremes.

Although I recovered from my eating disorder over a year ago, those thoughts that used to control me still come back, disguised as healthy choices, encouraging me to revert to old ways. But listening to a voice that’s telling me to avoid pasta because “it’s carbs and carbs are bad”, is worse for me than choosing what might be classed as a healthier food choice.

I hear a lot of people talking about the diets they are on, and there are many that generally do encourage healthier every-day-eating which is easier to maintain and evidentially has changed people’s lives for the better. But counting points or syns does have the potential to become addictive. It’s important to notice when this happens.

The lines are blurred, but I always revert back to ‘everything in moderation, including moderation’. I think if we are more in touch with our emotions around eating and how food makes us feel, we will find the natural balance. And that intuitiveness makes it easier to recognise when things start to get out of control. I experienced that on quite a serious level, and had I understood what was happening right at the beginning of my disorder, maybe I could have done something about it.

But I’m not just talking about the risk of eating disorders; I’m talking about general health and happiness. For me, now that I have recovered I feel like I have a whole new perspective that I want to share with people, because it’s so much more enjoyable than worrying about food all the time and then throwing my hands in the air, saying ‘to hell with it’, and making poor choices!

When it comes down to it, I just think we need to chill out a bit. Listen to your body, it usually knows what’s best for you. And as a word of advice, if you do feel your habits are getting out of control, talk to someone about it. Keeping those thoughts inside only makes it worse.