Eat With Love

There are more and more young people out there who are starting to make healthy choices about their food and lifestyle. This post is my #1 tip for any young people - or anyone, really, who is working on developing a healthier lifestyle and more specifically, diet.

Hi there! First of all, it is so great that you are so conscious about your diet and health at such a young age. Good for you!

As a young person who has been putting a focus on healthy eating in my life for about 5 years now (that's over a quarter of my life!) My #1 tip for my peers attempting the same thing is, don't be hard on yourself!

When I first got into healthy eating, I was struggling with an eating disorder I'd been dealing with since I was in 7th grade, so I was very strict about following my diet, and I did it out of fear and not love for myself. This lead me to "succeeding" at staying on the diet, but it also lead to a lot of unnecessary stress that blocked me from being able to reap all the benefits of the healthy diet I was following.

I don't know how relevant or not relevant this is, but my biggest suggestion is to identify what is driving you towards the diet that you want to achieve. Is it fear of being unhealthy or fat? Or is it because you DESERVE all the best, healthiest foods, because you DESERVE to feel amazing all the time?

For me, it got a lot easier, and more effortless and enjoyable to eat healthy, when I finally freed myself of the eating disorder mentality and began to look at what I was eating with love rather than fear.

(Here is a post that I made a year ago about how I was able to begin to overcome my eating disorder. I've come a long way since then,, but this is how my recovery began.)

When you know that you deserve the best so that you can feel your best, slipping up and eating shitty food occasionally isn't as stressful - and at the same time, you're very likely to always choose the healthiest option available because hey - you are INCREDIBLE, and you and your body deserve the very best feel to run on, because you deserve to feel awesome.

Peace (:

This has no relevence whatsoever. But its pretty cool, am I right? :D

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Healthy Appetite Again!

So I have a story to share, I haven't talked about this much before.

Like most girls of my generation, I once upon a time had an eating disorder. I actually don't know when it started for me. I faintly remember worrying that I was too fat before I was even in school. I think maybe it stemmed from the fact that Daddy spoke badly of fat people on occasion... People would always tell me I was skinny/tiny, even when I was little, but for whatever reason, I didn't believe them. Anyhow, psychoanalyzing that is a job for someone like Sigmund Freud, not a 16 year old who's been in her first psychology class for about 20 days. 'Cause I'm just guessin'. Aha.

Anyhow, I remember being like 10 years old, and I would eat more than I needed. I wouldn't really be hungry - I just loved the taste of bagels and Ritz crackers!

In 5th grade, I visited France on foreign exchange; I was there for about 3 weeks, and spent  the last half frightened that I had gained weight eating all of this rich, probably unhealthy, french food. And I didn't have a scale to make sure I hadn't gotten fat! Not kidding. 5th grade.

In 6th, I went on my first diet.

In 7th was when the eating disorder started, officially, I think. I started eating like 200calories per day, pro-ana sites, the works.

In 8th grade, I started going through binge-starve phases. At times I would decide I wanted to get better, but at the time I didn't really know how to do it, and I was still super afraid of gaining weight... So even though I tried not to care and just "listen to my body", it had me eating crazy amounts of food (to make up for starving at other times), I puffed up to my highest weight of 114. (It doesn't sound that bad...for whatever reason, I'm lucky enough my weight actually has never fluctuated horribly.)

Around 9th grade, bulimia started as well.

Throughout all this, I was slowly working my way through veganism, gourmet raw veganism, and fruitarianism.

Recently, I came to a place where I really feel like I understand food and what I'm eating. I understand what my body needs, and no longer feel like its a fight.

I've been raw for almost two years now, and I finally feel like my appetite has returned to normal. Like, normal normal healthy healthy. I eat when I'm hungry, and I don't eat when I'm not. The food I'm eating feels good in my body, and I don't regret what I'm eating.

I feel like I've reached equilibrium. I think a lot of this long-sought-after peace is thanks to my raw vegan fruitarian diet, and I feel so lucky that I found the diet and had the strength and resolve to stick with it this long.

I can't explain exactly what the diet has done for me, I don't think someone who hasn't experienced it could understand. But I feel more confident, I feel more mature, I feel more empathetic, I feel more in tune with my body, I am able to feel emotions more purely and strongly, I feel capable of truly loving, I feel more positive, I feel more at peace, I feel stronger, I feel more independent, I feel better.

And I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want to live this way. And lucky you, now that you've heard about LFRV, you have the opportunity to make it yours, too.