Letting Go

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” 
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free


Sometimes the hardest thing to do in life is to realize that you don't have control over certain situations.

I am a control freak...On certain things.
Food being one of them.

I control everything that goes into my body, to a point of obsession.
Ever since I stopped playing soccer a year ago, I have become sort of paranoid about what I eat, the calories I intake and the sugar, carb, and fat content of all of my food. 

After chatting with one of my best friends about my super strict diet and eating habits, she sort of made me feel like I had some sort of disorder. 
Not an eating disorder per se, more like "disordered eating".

People have told me before (including my mom) "wow you're looking really skinny these days." But I never thought anything of it. In fact, I liked it! Obviously I want people telling me I look good and thin, that's like the ultimate compliment.

But when I was talking to my friend a few days ago, she was being honest and open with me, and she told me that my eating habits are very extreme. 

It's sort of true, I never enjoy a treat every once in a while because I'm always freaked out about what it will do to my body. She also said it isn't normal how I panic out after I eat an ice cream. I always feel like I need to go do 100 situps and run 3 miles right afterwards.

Having a close friend tell me this really put things in perpective for me. I realized I'm only young once! And I can't be wasting my time away worrying about every calorie that I eat.
I've noticed my metabolism starting to slow down becuase I've been eating so little for so long. And when I do restrict myself severely, I totally binge and couple of days later and end up feeling awful.

So basically I just wanted to say: that us girls need to stop making our lives revolve around food. It took me a year to realize that I need to stop overstressing about everything I eat, and I need to just enjoy things in moderation and not worry if I go a couple hundred calories over my "limit" for the day.

My deprivation of fats and carbs from my diet has made me unhappy, cold, and frail. These are the times in our lives when we should be filling our bodies up with lots of wholesome foods. And ice cream is part of that diet too in moderation!

Basically, my words of wisdom for today are that all of us girls in society can't keep torturing ourselves by dieting. (Read my Societal Pressures rant) We should be enjoying life, not worrying about how many calories our next meal will be. I need to start letting go over the things I can't control, my body may not be the perfect model size, but it is the body I was born with so I have to embrace it. 

In honor of letting go, I had ice cream today with my friends. I didn't have it in place of lunch, I didn't skip a meal to make up for the calories of the ice cream. No, I had it as a snack. So yes, this will be adding a lot more calories into my "limit" for the day. And yes, I will be eating a normal-sized dinner. But I told myself I need to let go of all of the calorie counting and just enjoy the food. And after I ate it, I made sure I didn't  feel guilty. I didn't want that stress of feeling like I needed to go "burn it off" immediately after. I'm going to actually start enjoying food and stop worrying about the calories.

my noms for the day :) 

Love,
Emily