Nutrition is the fuel source of the body and while we all know this, it’s not always easy to comprehend at times.
I’ve always been really interested in nutrition and more recently in the last few years I completed a diploma of nutrition and dietetics for personal trainers as I’m also a qualified personal trainer.
I haven’t always had a healthy relationship with food though.
As a teenager I had a very unhealthy relationship with it. Guilt, shame, binge eating, and a junk food addiction were a major part of my lifestyle and I was overweight as a teenager.
Even though I grew up eating healthy home cooked meals my mum made I turned to junk food and unhealthy ways of eating.
When I was 19 I went to my mum and told her that I wanted to go on a diet and lose weight for real. She said to me, “Well that will be up to you then won’t it Kathryn.” Probably the best thing she could have ever said to me.
I’d tried all types of diets and none of them really worked so she offered to get me some sessions with a dietician and that started me on my journey of learning more about food and nutrition.
The good news was I ended up losing 16 kg. I cut out butter and cheese from my diet at the time and started eating a lot healthier as I was learning about the nutritional value of foods.
It wasn’t always easy and I actually ended up putting the weight back on but I did lose it again and I’ve always been committed to exercise and learning more about healthy eating. I however know how hard it can be to lose the weight and how challenging the emotions and mindset are that come with it.
One of the best things that helped me was being taught during the diploma of nutrition that Food was the Fuel Source of the body. I mean yes, but the penny really dropped for me in the course. We also had to create meal plans for athletes preparing for competitions and recovering and so the importance of what we eat became more apparent. This was a huge mindset shift for me. I also started to feel foods and how they made me feel after eating them which was so interesting to me, which I had done so for sometime prior to my course as I started to work out that eating bad foods made me feel bad in a sense of the emotions of guilt and shame.
The pandemic was an interesting time as I probably ate a bit more of the foods I wouldn’t normally eat or those I consider treat type foods during Lockdown in Melbourne. However I was still pretty happy with how I tackled the experience and didn’t put any pressure on myself to be exercising like I had before the pandemic and eating perfectly as there was a whole other mental and emotional component we were all experiencing to get through it.
I also have an emotional relationship with food, I’ve known this from a young age I’m definitely an emotional eater. If I’m experiencing difficult emotions I often turn to foods to comfort me. This is something that overtime has also improved through my understanding of and learning about healthy eating.
I will be talking more about nutrition in further posts as I think it’s so important and really impacts our health in a major way.
Learning that food was the fuel source of the body was a turning point for me. I mean really I should’ve known this but who really teaches us this stuff at home growing up. I had battled with being overweight and had an unhealthy relationship with food for a long time and experienced many negative emotions associated with eating certain foods, but this is always with me now when I make food choices.
Look at all those vibrant colours!
I mean Nutrition really should be taught in schools as it is such an important thing for all of us to learn. With the world becoming bigger and unhealthier and food companies pushing their own agendas and profits over nutrition it’s clear we need something to change.
Seeing the foods that I eat as fuel helped me gain a greater understanding of food and the support that it gives to the body.
Fuelling your body with nutritional foods is one of the most loving, kind and nurturing things that you can do for yourself in my opinion.
Cooking nutritious meals and eating and sharing them with your loved ones, family and friends and yourself is a beautiful thing that we can do for ourselves each day.
I’m not the greatest cook and I don’t always want to cook but over the years I’ve learnt to enjoy cooking and stick to my strengths.
Salads and cooking fairly basic but nutritional foods are my forte and I must say I do enjoy it. What I really enjoy is also knowing that I’m giving myself good nutrition.
I think everyone deserves to fuel their body with nutritious food not just because of the fact that our body needs nutrients for optimum health but also because we deserve it.
It’s just so sad that people in the world are still suffering from malnutrition particularly in this day and age, but this is not just the people and children in the poorest countries that are suffering I think many people in society are.
People in Western cultures have become disconnected to healthy ways of eating and healthy nutritious foods, probably because we are spoilt for choice and efficiency certainly can come into it as well.
It makes me sad to realise that not everyone is able to give themselves the nutrition that they deserve but also that the people that can are not doing that. Instead food is having the opposite effect with people eating the wrong foods and often at the wrong times throughout the day and it is having detrimental effects on health.
I hope you can do a loving thing for yourself each and every day by eating highly nutritious healthy whole foods, with few or no chemicals that really go to support your body, mind, soul and well-being. Not everyone has this gift of food every day that we often take for granted. If you are able I hope you can give yourself the nutrition your body needs and deserves.
Let’s discuss this further soon.
Adios Amigos (Goodbye Friends)
Kathryn
Featured Image Brooke Lark/Unsplash. Main Image by Kathryn Perez