demicoeur
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My Journey Towards a Healthier Happiness
🕑 Added 2019-03-21 15:00:02 +0000 UTCI'm a bit nervous about this post, if only because it might seem off-topic from the usual work/creativity related posts I've made in the past. However, I really feel like this has been a huge part of what's made creativity and work more balanced and fun for me, so I'm gonna dive into it!
I wanted to talk a little bit about the evolution of my relationship to my body and how that's negatively impacted my physical and mental health in the past. This is a long ass post but I hope you find it insightful or helpful in some way!
A few years ago I would have thought there was no real connection between my body and my creative work because, for the majority of my life, I viewed my body as just a cumbersome and inconvenient transport for my brain. I didn't really think about how my mind and body are connected, or how physical health can affect mental health, and vice versa. My negative body image, disordered eating and punishing exercise regimes combined with periods of binge eating were, instead, consuming and skewing my whole mentality around health and wellness.
There's a lot to unpack there, so I'll try and start from the beginning. The negative body image started very young, as it does with lots of us these days. It's a pretty common story. Many people in my life, both family and friends, made commentary about my body growing up. Whether it was about my development in puberty, the clothes I chose to wear, any weight loss or gain I experienced, or the paleness of my skin, the majority of these comments were hyper critical. By the time I was 12 years old, I thought I was fat, ugly and unlovable because of my body.
This fed into viewing food and exercise as punishments I deserved for eating too much junk food or not moving around enough. I would go through spats of a few months where I'd try and cut everything 'bad' from my diet and dive into workouts far too advanced for my current experience level. This would work for about 4 months in which I'd lose weight, but I would feel awful. I craved food (especially junk food) more than ever, my body ached and was constantly fatigued. My mind was obsessively preoccupied by what foods I should or shouldn't eat, which made art and creativity difficult. All the diet advice I found was contradictory and extremely restrictive. They would tell me to cut out foods I knew were healthy (fruit, eggs, nuts, avocados) just because they were high in a nutrient that diet wanted to eliminate (sugars, fats or carbs). Completely unsustainable, it would pose any deviation from that prescribed diet as a weakness of willpower on my part rather than it simply not being right for me. I struggled through every workout too, never feeling like they got easier or I improved. I thought everyone was lying about runner's high or endorphins, because I always felt like shit after exercise. I also suffered countless injuries overtaxing my muscles and joints this way.
Eventually, I would stop losing weight. I'd work harder, cut more food, and my body would stubbornly remain the same. It was at this point I'd freak out. I was doing everything right, and I felt like my body was sabotaging my progress. This would become too much for me. I'd think, 'fine, it's not even working so what's the point? I might as well just eat whatever I want and never get up off the sofa.' So I'd binge and laze for months. This should have been an enjoyable reprieve from the earlier phase, but I couldn't enjoy it because most of it I experienced in a fugue like state. Food would be in front of me and I'd forget having eaten it. I'd continue this way until I'd regained all the weight. I'd tell myself I just didn't care anymore, or that I was just prioritizing my work and art. I'd reach a point where clothes became ill-fitting and my shame would kick in, and restart the cycle of burning myself out at the gym and crash-dieting all over again.
Tonnes of us go through something like this. The diet and food industry tries to tell us that it's our fault, our lack of willpower, our problem. Most of the things they're selling are temporary fixes at best, and total sabotage of our bodies at worst. I always knew this, but then I'd think that maybe THIS diet, THIS exercise regime would be the fix I'd been looking for, without ever really identifying that my total lack of love for myself or my own body was the underlying cause of all this turmoil. I was treating my body like a machine, but even machines need care and repair. I'll try, as best as I can, to break down what was happening to me during these cycles as I can.
The first thing I was doing was throwing my body, without preparation, into a massive food deficit. While this alone could cause weight loss, it was indicating to my body that I was in a state of famine. It would respond by eating away at anything in my body - muscle and fat alike. I would, initially, see this as a good thing. However, due to the lack of proper nutrition, my body simply couldn't achieve what I wanted it to in my workouts. I was slamming my foot on the accelerator on an empty tank of gas. Adding these workouts onto a starvation diet compounded my body's response and stress levels. Our bodies are smart. It's thinking ahead, even if I'm not, and it's thinking 'if we keep losing weight at this rate, we're going to starve.' So it lowers my metabolic rate. It lowers it so far that the food deficit, the exercise I'm doing - these are now my 'baseline.' This is all the calories I'll ever burn in a given day. This lower metabolic rate makes me exhausted, stressed, moody. I'd suffer digestive issues, my nails and hair would get brittle, my periods would become irregular. Literally every indication that I was not in any way healthier because of this diet and exercise. I was telling myself I'd done all this to be healthy, but I in no way listened to my body when it told me everything to the contrary. All this would have massive knock-on effects on my creative life and mental health. I'd oscillate between depressed and furious that my body wouldn't just do what I wanted it to. I'd struggle to complete work to my satisfaction or usual efficiency level, given how exhausted and foggy-headed I was.
I'd told myself that being 'healthier' would make me a happier, more creative person. The problem was, I had no idea what healthy even looked like. The bigger problem was that the source of my motivation was self-loathing, not self-love, and that just wasn't sustainable or healthy in and of itself.
This has shifted gradually over the last year. I can't really pinpoint how it happened (though therapy was a huge factor), but I suddenly came to the understanding that, if I wanted to be happy and healthy, I needed to cultivate a more loving relationship with myself and my body that went beyond its size and shape. I started thinking about all the things my body does for me with a strange sense of gratitude rather than resentment. All that weight it was refusing to lose? It was trying to save me from starvation. My heart kept beating, my lungs kept breathing through it all without me having to even think about it. My organs were squeezing every ounce of nutrition they could out of whatever I ate. My brain was trying to just get me to go the fuck to sleep so I could recover. I started thinking about how my body was the nurturing parent I'd needed, always trying to take care of me, even as I abused the hell out of it. I would cycle between emotionally and physically abusing my body to neglecting it all-together. I never once listened to what it was saying - 'you deserve to keep living, no matter what.'
That might sound utterly mental, but it was life - changing for me. Here are some of the things that have changed since then, and helped me form a better relationship with my body (and by extension, my mind and creative side).
There are no 'Good' or 'Bad' foods - instead of obsessively villainizing certain foods or nutrients, I started seeing food as nourishment. I categorized food as 'makes my body feel good' and 'makes my mind feel good', and decided which I needed more than others. I'd ask myself how I felt after eating them and make decisions on how much of each foods felt good to eat. I did track the calories and nutrition, but more so that I could gain a better understanding of what fuelled me and what made me feel gross, and some days I wouldn't track to give myself a break. The tracking was more to reeducate myself about food and nutrition than to stamp labels of 'bad' or 'good' on them.
I listen to my body when I work out - I found some weight-lifting programs to start with, because my gym's been closed for refurbishment for nearly 2 years, and I needed something I could do from home. I started with the lightest weights, the lowest number of circuits, just to see where I was at. If something hurt in a way that felt weird, I'd stop and reassess whether my form was off or that exercise simply wasn't for me. I made sure to ask myself if what I was doing was challenging, or damaging, and adjusted constantly. If a weight became to heavy to complete a good rep, I dropped it and completed the exercise with a lighter one. My body can always tell me when something is too much, or when I need to ramp things up a little.
I treat rest days as sacred - I used to really live by the 'no rest for the wicked' motto, and treated any day that I didn't exercise as a lost opportunity. In reality, I was sabotaging my progress. By giving my body no time to recover, it couldn't build muscle or strength. I was courting serious injuries by pushing already sore and exhausted muscles past breaking. The MOST I do on a rest day is go for a walk, and I do not eat less on rest days to compensate for a lack of exercise. If I'm still really sore even after a rest day, I take another one. I also try to eat things with the nutrition I know my body needs after a heavy workout.
I don't restrict calories - This was killing my metabolism and causing my body extreme stress. Part of why I'm tracking still is to make sure I'm not over OR under eating. I view this as taking care of my body.
I drink lots of water - I used to almost NEVER feel thirsty or I would mistake thirst for hunger. I drink around 2.5-3 litres a day now and it's made a massive difference in my mental clarity.
I get creative with my recipes - lots of different coloured food, ingredients I haven't tried before, different seasoning combinations. I'm looking at food more as an opportunity to try new things rather than a chore or an obstacle.
I don't weigh myself more than once a month - I used to obsess over the scale. The number on it would determine whether I was a success or a failure. That stupid number doesn't reflect ANYTHING. It doesn't tell you how much of that weight is muscle, bone, water, organ tissue, bacteria, or undigested food. The scales that claim to break down the components to tell you a fat percentage are infamously inaccurate and shift by the hour every day. I mostly measure based on how I'm feeling and take occasional progress photos.
If I'm bored with my food or workouts, I try something new - instead of feeling beholden to one style of workout or eating, I see boredom as an opportunity to get adventurous.
Recovery is just as important as exercise - I treat stretching, warming up and foam rolling as TLC. They help my body recover from the exercise and I'm noticeably less stiff and sore after my workouts. The soreness I experience now doesn't get in the way of my day-to-day life the way it did before. I also treat stretching as an opportunity to increase my flexibility (which can help prevent injury and bad form during workouts).
The diet and food industry don't care about you, your body cares about you - those industries are toxic; they just want to turn a profit selling you some pill, supplement or diet they propose as a magic cure-all. You are a bank balance to them, not a human being. My body is all I need to tell me what to eat, how much, what exercise works and feels good. Fuck the people who tell you not to eat avocados cuz they're high in fat, and fuck the people who tell you not to eat fruit because you can't be in ketosis if you're eating too many carbs. Unless you're allergic to something, it's not a bad food. Eat what your body wants and needs.
All of the things I do need to come from a place of self-love - the most unsustainable nutrition and exercise plans are the ones derived from self-hatred. If I'm dreading it, if I feel like I'm only doing this to be thin so the people who once criticized me will love me, it will never work. Those people criticized me because they're just as critical and hateful towards themselves and their own bodies, and that's sad, but I don't need their approval. Is it making me feel good? Then let's keep doing it.
Treat my body like I treat my plants and pets - this is maybe weird for some people, but that nurturing, loving feeling I get about my plants and pets? That's how I feel towards my body now. Protective, caring, nurturing. Like plants and pets, I need food and water and sunshine. Like my pets, I need exercise. Taking this simple approach has really helped combat that negative voice in my head that equates health with being skinny or appreciated by the hyper-critical people in my life.
If I'm honest, all this is just the tip of the iceberg for me! Though I immediately felt a difference in how I felt, body and mind, I'm still making adjustments and learning about what works and doesn't work for me. I hope to keep learning. One thing is most obvious to me, and that's how much happier I am when taking care of myself in this way. I don't feel so stressed. If something takes me a little longer than usual, I'm forgiving with myself, and I enjoy the work a lot more.
I know this is a little off-piece for an art patreon, but hopefully it's been interesting to some of you! Thanks so much for reading and supporting me here. I'm so pleased to get to talk to you about some of my real-life struggles and how I'm dealing with them. If you have your own strategies for maintaining a happy, healthy life, feel free to share them, or if you really struggle with this stuff too, feel free to tell me. You're not alone. For a long time, I wasn't ready to accept myself for the way I was, and that's okay too. Part of that journey towards self-love is riding out the waves of negative stuff, too.
Much love to you all!
~Demi
