{"id":522490,"date":"2015-09-25T12:01:07","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T16:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/?p=522490"},"modified":"2018-08-21T08:59:38","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T12:59:38","slug":"this-is-why-counting-calories-is-the-best-thing-ive-done-for-my-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/chelsea-fagan\/2015\/09\/this-is-why-counting-calories-is-the-best-thing-ive-done-for-my-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Counting Calories Is The Best Thing I\u2019ve Done For My Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cUmm,\u201d started a recent anonymous message I received on Tumblr, which is never a good beginning for anything. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of obnoxious that you alternate between skinny outfit pictures and fat food pictures on Instagram. We get it, you can eat whatever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whoa.<\/p>\n

I always knew that the phenomenon of thinking someone could eat anything they want, in any quantity, with no consequence was something people held onto. But I\u2019d never had it directed at me. You see, as I\u2019ve talked about before<\/a> here, I only recently slimmed down by about 22 pounds, going from the top of my \u201cnormal\u201d BMI \u2013 which read as a little doughy, and not anyone\u2019s definition of \u201cskinny\u201d \u2013 to the middle of my BMI, which puts me at 5\u20196, 130, and about a size six. It might not seem like a huge difference, but it\u2019s apparently enough of a chasm that people will go from never remarking on your body to actively referring to it as skinny. And it also means I\u2019m now being lumped in with the size-00 models who, to maintain a severely underweight BMI, are very likely Not Eating That. But the truth is that, yes, I did very much eat that pie or that fried chicken.<\/p>\n

I can<\/em> eat whatever I want, but the great thing is that so can you<\/em>. So can literally fucking anyone. As long as you practice moderation and monitor your intake vs output, you can eat literally whatever you want and maintain\/lose weight to your goals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the longest time, like many people, my weight and food choices were hugely tied up in my emotions, and I regarded a day that I ate a sleeve of those delicious supermarket frosted sugar cookies as a \u201cbad day,\u201d one where I felt \u2013 besides just physically gross \u2013 incredibly guilty. I was wracked with this sense of self-sabotage, and felt the need to atone over the next few days in an unsustainable way. (Or, worse, I would just consider the entire week shot and eat whatever I wanted, in an effort to double down on my \u201cbadness.\u201d) Being constantly emotionally caught up in my eating habits, and using them to render some kind of judgment on who I was as a person, was more than just exhausting. It was, mentally, extremely unhealthy, and despite its constant presence in my life, it never resulted in me actually losing weight. I just got doughier, more lethargic, and hated myself more in the process.<\/p>\n

When I started counting calories \u2013 learning exactly how many I was expending, on average, and how many I needed to consume to either lose or maintain my weight \u2013 all of the emotion suddenly slipped away. I realized that, no matter how much I wanted to berate myself for having a \u201cbad\u201d day, it wasn\u2019t going to override the laws of thermodynamics, and guilt tripping doesn\u2019t burn calories. I got used to actually being aware of portion sizes, understanding how calorie-dense little meals and snacks could be, and deciding where I wanted to \u201cspend\u201d vs. \u201csave\u201d in my day-to-day diet. For the first six months or so, I counted calories and measured my food pretty seriously to get a clear picture of how I needed to eat, but it\u2019s since loosened up to the point where I can pretty much eyeball it. I have learned that, if I want to weigh a certain amount, it\u2019s literally a math equation to get me there \u2013 the hard part is learning how to deal with cravings, impulse, and the (very frequent) desire to eat out of boredom.<\/p>\n

And while losing weight has been a huge result of this, and being able to maintain my new weight has been nice, too, the biggest positive has been my general confidence and serenity when it comes to food.<\/p>\n

I no longer tie up my emotions in these things, and I understand that the body (and heightened sense of energy and healthfulness) that I desire are totally within my reach. One \u201cbad\u201d day doesn\u2019t break me, just as one \u201cgood\u201d day is not enough to justify a junk food binge afterward. It\u2019s all a simple equation, and it doesn\u2019t have to be more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

All it takes is being honest with myself, and understanding that treating certain foods as special treats isn\u2019t punishment, it\u2019s a sane and healthy way to live. I no longer need to oscillate between the extremes, because there is room for everything in a balanced diet.<\/p>\n

Which is why comments like that anonymous message annoy me so profoundly. The thing is, all of the food we eat can fit within our goals. If I wanted to, tomorrow, I could eat two Big Macs and a side of fries with Diet Coke and still, after a moderate walk, come in within my \u201cmaintenance\u201d calories. Of course, I wouldn\u2019t probably do that, because I\u2019d feel like crap and be hungry as hell for the rest of the day. But I could, if I wanted to. And so could the person who left me that message, and so could any of the rest of us. While some people might associate \u201ccounting calories\u201d with \u201cbeing unnecessarily obsessed with your food,\u201d I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s been the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s allowed me to be free of moralizing food, and just enjoy it for what it is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Counting calories has made so much room in my mental health to just live, without worrying about what my dinner says about me as a person \u2013 and that, to me, is worth way more than any dress size. \"Thought<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cUmm,\u201d started a recent anonymous message I received on Tumblr, which is never a good beginning for anything. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of obnoxious that you alternate between skinny outfit pictures and fat food pictures on Instagram. We get it, you can eat whatever you want.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36248491,"featured_media":907220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[603198233],"tags":[],"anchortext":[603198841],"posttemplate":[603196126],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[178686843],"class_list":["post-522490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-self-help","featured_content-nrml"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/heather-schwartz-493953-unsplash.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36248491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522490"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907221,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522490\/revisions\/907221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522490"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=522490"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=522490"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=522490"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=522490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}