It's okay to change your mind when it comes to anything, including health and fitness.
It has happened to me many times over the last 15 years. I've changed my mind several times.
Whenever we are on our journey, we see things from OUR perspective, through OUR lens, which is all normal and expected.
What I Used to Believe About Health and Fitness
Years ago I laughed at people who went to the gym because I thought: Why gym if you can get skinny running? That's because my priority was to be skinny.
6-7 years later I said: Crossfit is the workout, everyone should do that! (Remember the joke about how you know if someone does crossfit? They talk about it every single minute. Yep, that was me.)
After that, my next idea was: Why do Crossfit or run if you could save so much time and burn the most fat doing HIIT? Everyone, do that!
When it comes to food, I've been pretty dogmatic there too. I've been the Everyone Must Be Paleo and Everyone Has To Practice Intermittent Fasting girl.
I Got Overtrained… And My Ideas Changed.
Then I got really overtrained and my metabolism slowed down big time, and I stopped having my period because I did all the things above and never knew what moderation was. My take on exercise and eating habits changed 180 degrees. For the next few yeas, I thought that…
Any food restriction probably means dieting, and that’s no bueno. I rolled my eyes when someone said they have gluten intolerance. I thought they're finding excuses for dieting (and some people were).
Anyone with a weight loss goal is obsessed. A lot of people really are, but not everyone!
I also thought that exercising to change your physique is a bad goal, and that you can't like yourself and want to change your body at the same time.
What About Balanced Perspective?
Today, I don't think any of the above is true because I finally see things from a balanced perspective. It's been a long ride to get to this place where I can see why people have certain goals, and not judge them.
Here's what I believe today:
✅Health should always be number one priority.
✅It's possible to exercise regularly and not be obsessed with it.
✅It's possible to have a weight loss goal and not hate yourself.
✅No one should be shamed for their goals.
✅It’s ok to occasionally push yourself, as long as you actually recover from it. Health first.
✅Take all the rest days your body needs.
✅Different workouts have different purposes & give different results, but one type of workout isn't better than the other.
✅Same with diet.
How have your thoughts on health & fitness changed over the years?
This was me!
Before my ED I didn’t care almost at all about diets, exercising….then I suddenly wanted ‘to become fit’ and ‘tone up’ because many people around me were talking about their new diets, going to the gym….so I wanted to do that too. But it soon spyralled into a full blown eating disorder. I got to a point where if I saw someone eating a lot of chocolate I would be disgusted and sometimes even tell them ‘omg, how can you eat so much chocolate, you said you were on a diet’. Fortunately, I recovered, and got out of my head everything I believed a few months back. I faced my fears and begun eating everything in moderation. But now I had gone to the other extreme: when people would tell:”i’m on a diet. Sorry, I can’t eat cake with you today, maybe another day” or “i just started going to the gym, it’s amazing, I’m going to lose weight, everything is going well” in my mind I would judge them and think that they had an ED or were just obsessed.
In fact, it was me who was obsessed:(
Sounds like this resonates with you a lot! There’s a super fine line between these areas: What’s dedication, what’s obsession, what’s taking care of your body and what’s being obsessing in an unhealthy. Only we know our balance and where the line goes for us! Thanks so much for commenting.