i think i've always been a 'health-conscious' person; not necessarily a 'healthy' person, but I did give more than two shits about what I ate and whether I was doing enough exercise. having gone through an eating disorder back in high school, I've swung to extremes in terms of my physique but never quite felt like i'd nailed this 'healthy lifestyle' thing completely.
i think the problem has always been my perfectionist tendencies. unless my exercise was on point for consecutive weeks, and I was eating super-healthy, I always felt like I fell short. this also applied to how I felt about my body - like it was never good enough. even when I did manage to keep up my good habits for a few weeks, I still felt like a fraud to be considered a really 'healthy person' because I didn't look like it. i didn't have the body that screamed 'healthy person'. i was still soft in different places.
but then after watching a ted talk by Michael Greger, i had a mini-epiphany.
that health has absolutely NOTHING to do with how i look, and EVERYTHING to do with whether i was actually h.e.a.l.t.h.y - in the sense of not having diseases, not subjecting myself to risk of cancer, not overloading my internal system with things that are just not good for my body.
I guess it's weird that this feels like an epiphany - obviously being healthy is about a well-functioning, disease-free body. But for the longest time, i had equated health with a certain body type.
Going forward, I hope that my mind won't be plagued by a physique-centred approach to health. I hope that I remind myself that it doesn't matter what my body looks like. I hope that I remember to take care of my body because I want to live a long, fulfilling life, full of energy and free of disease.
Back in my second year at university, I went through a phase where I went to the gym for 2 hours, 6 times a week and ate around 1200 cal per day. I was losing weight and thought 'OMG I am finally healthy'. However, I was the furthest thing from healthy. My grades were going down, I was feeling blue all the time, I was obsessed with what I was eating, and I was tired all the time. Looking back now I see that rather than making my body stronger and eating the right things. I was slowly ruining it