Five Upgrades You Need to Make to Your Health and Wellness Routine
Ditch “clean eating”
The best way to practice clean eating is to wash your fruits and veggies before you eat them! Or I guess if you were adamant about it you could eat your meals in the tub or something… Otherwise, “clean eating” is honestly irrelevant. If you think about it, what foods are “clean” foods? I bet it depends a lot on who you ask and/or which diet you are currently prescribing to. Here’s the thing: viewing foods as “clean” or “dirty,” “good” or “bad,” “healthy” or “unhealthy,” are all recipes for food confusion, guilt, shame, and added stress (and we all know that stress is worse for you than any food you could put in your body!!).
How do you promote your health without “eating clean?” You listen to your body. You eat nutritionally dense foods but don’t restrict less nutrient-dense foods. What people don’t realize is, even processed foods provide our bodies with nutrients! Yes, eat your fruits and veggies, drink water, and get some form of carbs, fats, and proteins in, but please please stop obsessing so much on where those sources are coming from. (For more detailed information, I recommend reading this article)!
Practice practical self-care
I will say it once and I will say it for the rest of my life: get rid of the all-or-nothing mindset! I hope you know by now that self-care isn’t complicated. The reality is, life isn’t always predictable. Some days self-care is going to look very different. Wellness culture wants us to believe that we have to have this “perfect” and “healthy” routine full of meditation, “clean eating” (hopefully you read the previous section), journaling every morning/night, exercise every day, etc. Sometimes self-care is just making sure the dishes are done before you go to sleep, moving your body in some way (even if it’s just walking to the store or something), or even drinking water and fueling your body. Routines can be great, but when they’re rooted in the pursuit of “perfect health,” it’s just not sustainable OR healthy. It’s ok to just do your best. Show yourself some compassion and just live your life as a perfectly imperfect human.
Move for fun, not by force
Forcing yourself to go to the gym or whatever exercise you feel you “have” to do to achieve your health goals is unproductive long term. You will most likely get burnt out (blog post on this coming soon). If you’re also going to the gym for the sole purpose of changing your body, it’s going to drain you and only cause you to become obsessive and hyper-focused on your body. Bottom line: it’s not sustainable! Moving for pleasure means you can move however you want, whenever you want, for however long you want. I promise you, movement is movement. Of course, different kinds of movement may lead to different results (strength vs. strong heart vs. relaxation, etc.), but for the sake of #wellness, all movement fits. Exercise for energy, exercise for heart health, exercise for empowerment. What that exercise looks like depends on how much time you have, your mood, your energy levels, and so much more. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you have to put yourself in a box when it comes to movement.
Prioritize social relationships
Having supportive friendships, family members, coworkers, etc. are significantly more predictive of living longer than any other factor (that’s right, including what you eat and how much you weigh. boom). When I was in the thick of my orthorexia, I ended up alienating my best friends. I had never been lonelier. At first, I thought it was because “we had nothing in common anymore” because I was so into nutrition and wellness and they weren’t. But then I found myself not only being worried and critical about what I ate but critical of them too. I threw out unsolicited nutrition advice like confetti and it was not received well (obviously). Do it for your health, do it for the people who love and care about you, or do it for the freedom from rules and restrictions. Whatever your reason, it’s worth it to let go of the wellness obsession.
Realize losing weight does not equal health
Losing weight is not the best way to be healthy. Diets of any kind lead to disordered eating (frequently binge eating) as well as weight gain. 95% of diets result in gaining back the same weight or more in 5 years. Abs can be seen in women around 16-19% body fat, while fertility is reduced in women when body fat is under 22%.3 There are also a bunch of other health-related complications that come with too much weight loss. Health is not shrinking your body. Health is also MORE than your body. Mental and emotional health are just as, if not more, important (especially because they are not separate from physical health either). You know what IS good for your health? Everything I’ve mentioned above. Also dance parties! When your focus is on shrinking your body, your life shrinks too. How can anyone think that’s what health is supposed to be about?
Holt-Lunstad, Julianne, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton. "Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review." PLoS medicine7, no. 7 (2010).
Grodstein, Francine, Rachel Levine, Lisa Troy, Terri Spencer, Graham A. Colditz, and Meir J. Stampfer. "Three-year follow-up of participants in a commercial weight loss program: can you keep it off?." Archives of Internal Medicine 156, no. 12 (1996): 1302-1306.
A. Ziomkiewicz, P.T. Ellison, S.F. Lipson, I. Thune, G. Jasienska, Body fat, energy balance and estradiol levels: a study based on hormonal profiles from complete menstrual cycles, Human Reproduction 23, no. 11, (2008): 2555–2563