My Food Philosophy

After writing about my exercise philosophy I thought I would also give you a bit of an insight into my food philosophy.

My food philosophy has changed dramatically over the past decade, from having no philosophy other than stuffing whatever I wanted into my mouth, to counting calories in an effort to ditch a few kilo’s to what my philosophy has become today.

I often have people make comments and assumptions about my food and eating philosophy which can get old quickly. My food philosophy has been constantly evolving over the years as I discover what works for me.

To get to my food philosophy today I feel as though we need to go back in time to where I didn’t have a philosophy other than eat whatever I wanted, in whatever quantities I wanted, however often I wanted and then added a day or two of what is likely to be called binge drinking on top of that for good measure.

I was lucky enough not to have any serious health issues but somehow saw the light myself and realised that I wasn’t doing my body or my health any favors by continuing on this path. Whilst I was by no means obese I was technically bordering on the overweight category according to the BMI scale (which I now think is a rubbish tool for measuring!).

It was purely for vanity reasons that I decided to take my health into my own hands. I was over 15kg heavier than I had ever been when I was at school and living at home and in a short couple of years I had managed to put this weight on through not exercising and my lack of nutritional eating.

15kg may not seem like a lot but on my tiny 156cm frame and the fact that I seemed to hold it all around my middle, I was beginning to feel even more self-conscious about my body than ever.

I began to do some exercise and started this foreign thing called counting calories. I signed up to My Fitness Pal (which I talked about in the article about my top apps for living a healthier lifestyle) and it told me that I should be eating 1,200 calories a day. I soon began to workout how many calories were in the items of food I had been eating and begun to make small changes to what I had been eating to reach my 1,200 calories a day. 

I soon began to try and bring my old lifestyle back into the 1,200 calories a day and I knew that a cheeseburger was 280 calories and a medium fries from McDonalds was a similar amount. I purchased a heart rate monitor and begun to workout a little bit and would try to burn at least 300 additional calories a day so that I could eat a bit more. 

The calorie counting would go out the window when it came to the weekends and we could eat takeaways and have a few beverages. It was a particularly unhealthy cycle even though I was eating better for most of the week that I had been previously and I was now exercising a little bit. 

I’m not sure exactly what the turning point was but I decided to join a real gym at the same time as I was playing netball a few times a week. I had a few moments where I was feeling faint and dizzy at netball from not eating before I played as I didn’t want to go over my calories for the day. It was never dangerous as I wasn’t super strict on not going over my calories but I found myself to be getting too attached to the idea of meeting my calories and burning extra calories each day so that I could eat more, so I stopped counting calories for a few months. 

In this time since I was going to the gym more I begun to stop drinking as much and didn’t really get the cravings for bad food as often as I had been prior to joining the gym. With the freedom of not counting calories I was feeling a lot better. I did occasionally track some of my days to see how I was doing and making sure I wasn’t letting too many bad foods slip back into my diet. 

When I reached a plateau in my weight loss I went back to counting calories, with an exception: I increased my calories! I increased up to 1,400 per day and then 1,500 and 1,600 as I was beginning to feel really good and my strength was coming along nicely. The difference with this time around is that I was pretty much only eating good foods. I would go out for dinner or lunch once a week or so and sometimes choose a burger and sometimes choose a salad. I was training 4 times a week at the gym and playing 4 games of netball, on days I was training I would also eat back the calories I burnt from exercising. 

After I moved to Auckland I began lifting heavier weights and getting more serious about increasing my strength as I realised more and more the difference lifting weights was having on my body. I moved in with the bf who at the time had been competing in bodybuilding competitions and was very good with his eating.  

The amount of foods I ate out of a package declined even further than it had been before, I wasn’t counting calories, I was eating when I was hungry and most importantly I was feeling better than even both mentally and my strength was increasing in the gym. 

Today my food philosophy is to eat real food. It is quite simple but with modern day conveniences and the fact that society has become accustomed to eating crap food, you get looked at weird or have comments muttered towards you when you are eating healthy, it makes it a lot easier to just follow the pack. 

We still have the occasional indulgence but these are occasional, we buy pizza on date night and I go out for lunch with colleagues once a week where sometimes it is sushi or thai and sometimes it may be a burger. We have both tried a number of styles of eating and Kyle has been noticing his body does not do well with gluten where I seem to be okay with it. 

We largely eat a paleo lifestyle with dairy products and some rice, not because it is the trendy thing to do these days but because we have found this is what works for us. Breakfast could be bacon and eggs or a smoothie, snacks are often bliss balls, fruit or nuts, lunch will often be some form of leftover meat with vegetables and dinner will generally be meat of some description with either rice or kumara and some vegetables. 

Like I said, I have no problem eating some pizza or a burger occasionally and I have the biggest sweet tooth out so occasionally indulge in a piece of cake, biscuit or chocolate.  I do try to make healthier versions of these items as I don’t feel like I need to pump a lot of sugar into my body but I don’t look down on anyone who does. 

I think we could all benefit from eating a lot more real food, reducing the items we buy from packages and cutting down our sugar but at the same time I don’t think we need to get all regimented on it and look down on people who don’t have that type of lifestyle. 

If you stuck through that to the end, well done. It ended up being a lot longer than I originally anticipated! 

If you would like some more reading material, check out my exercise philosophy.

Do you have a sweet or savoury tooth??