In this post, I'm talking about why it's so important to make the food and fitness decisions that work for you, but also respect what others are doing.
Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of fitness and food shaming lately. It goes both ways: Those who work out intensely, tell that everyone should work out like that and if they don't, they're doing it wrong.
On the flipside, those who, for example, rest and recover from amenorrhea or other form of metabolic damage, may easily think that everyone who works out intensely, is doing it wrong.
This kind if shaming shouldn't exist, and this is what I'm talking about in today's video!
I understand that it's easy to see this topic (or anything for that matter) based on where we are on our journey. This was me too. I'm sharing this because maybe you do the same… I'm not judging, but it's useful to take a look!
When I was super into running and later high intensity training, I thought that everyone should train this way. Comes out, this intense training with very little rest time, burned me out and wrecked my metabolism. That's because I was all about all or nothing.
Then I had to start my hypothalamic amenorrhea recovery. That meant, resting a ton, doing leisure walks, eating a lot and putting on weight. I have a lot of videos on this topic over at my YouTube channel, so feel free to tune in there! But what I realize now is that for quite some time, I thought that most intense exercise is unhealthy and people who do it, are wrong…
So, here I was again, with my black and white thinking.
I have finally reached a point where I can understand that everyone has different goals and also their health is different. Our goals can vary even daily, based on what's going on in our lives!
I no longer judge those who do intense exercise or those who do yoga or walk. I accept (and do) both.
I no longer judge those who have weight loss goals. I now understand that not everyone loses weight in an unhealthy way, or end up with an eating disorder the way I did. it can be done in a responsible way.
I no longer believe that following a certain way of eating means food obsession. Plenty of people follow a diet for health reasons. I have to keep my sugar low if I want to avoid period pains. And also, I no longer think that paying attention to your nutrition to change body composition is always a dangerous thing. At the same time, I'm not encouraging anyone to do it — it's everyone's personal choice.
So, I realize that this post doesn't have a list of bullet points and teaching tools, but I hope that you learn from my experience and see that we can be accepting of everyone's choices. Our own health is the only one we should focus on.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
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