My Food Philosophy Part 2

If you haven’t read part 1 yet…check it out now!

When I finished part 1, I mentioned everything changed my Junior year of high school. Midway through my Junior year, I decided to do home school. I felt like I was wasting my time in a school that wasn’t focused towards my goals. Once I made the switch, I loved  home school. I got to do my own thing, choose when I did my homework (which I always did) and worked full time at my retail job. After a while, I got really bored. I spent my days waiting for my friends to get out of school and nights hanging out with them and working.

I decided I needed to do something productive with my time spent “waiting around”, so I started exercising more.

I started by going to Pilates every couple nights, and I loved it. I felt strong and was in the best shape of my life.

A month or so later I took it a step farther and worked on my eating. Rather than eating clean, healthy foods I ate the “diet” foods….100 calorie snack packs, low fat, nonfat, low cal, etc. I started counting calories and watching what I ate trying to achieve “perfect health”, when in reality I was just feeding myself a bunch of fake foods that were doing me more harm than good.

I always thought everyone ate like me. I had no idea people actually focused on eating real foods with real ingredients, rather than finding foods that would keep me in my calorie range for the day.

Now…
 

My meal choices are pretty much completely opposite now.

-I don’t count calories

I think the focus should be focused on serving sizes/portions rather than calories. Plus, counting calories is a huge headache and can be obsessive. If you go out to lunch with friends, no one wants to sit at the table waiting for you to finish calculating your meal to see how much of it you’re allowed to eat.

-I never buy anything  just for the sake of low fat or low calorie

It usually tastes gross and it’s really not necessary. I would rather have a little bit of the delicious real thing than a ton of the gross fake thing.

-I always choose the shortest ingredient list

My rule: never choose a product that has more ingredients than you would use in the kitchen at home

-I hardly ever look at calories (now it’s just out of curiosity rather than counting)

Again, don’t obsess over it. Sometimes I look just because I’m comparing products and wonder why one has more than the other.

-I watch the ingredients I eat, not the calories/fat/carbs

It’s totally okay to watch what you feed your body!

-I don’t believe in depriving myself 

If I want to eat something, I do. No food is “off limits”. I don’t know about you, but I would go crazy if I couldn’t have a couple pieces of chocolate everyday!

What’s your food philosophy?