A World of Healthoholics

Your alarm wakes you up at 6 a.m. You jump up and roll out your yoga mat for your daily morning stretches, you can’t remember where you read this exactly, but it said somewhere that it’s healthy for your muscles-so you do it. 

You then proceed with your 7 a.m. morning workout. Never a rest day. You're tired today but look how good your abs look! 

Next it's time for your post workout breakfast in which you obsessively make sure there is an adequate source of protein, carbs, and fat for muscle repair. You make your usual: protein oatmeal with blueberries and peanut butter plus an almond milk latte (again you read somewhere that oat milk is dangerous and whole milk is bad, so almond milk it is).

As the day rumbles on you make sure you squeeze in your 20 minute walk, sweetgreen salad for lunch, and your protein bar snack (your office brought in free donuts but you feel they will ruin your progress, so no donut for you today).

You have a date for dinner, they chose an Italian restaurant. What really looks good is the cacio e pepe, but you know the naked bowl of carbs and fats with no veggies or protein won’t make you feel “physically good”...it's unhealthy you tell yourself again and again.  So you pass and are satisfied with the farro salmon plate. You drool over your dates bolognese. 

You tell yourself it's worth it. 

You tell yourself you are feeling your best.

Because you are just so healthy. 

Right?

You are healthy because when you are at a party and say no to the cake people say to you: “You are just so disciplined!”

You are healthy because on vacation you still make time for your 30 minute daily workout and your family members praise you with: “Wish I had your drive!”

You are healthy because when you go out to dinner you opt for the kale salad as everyone else enjoys the hot slice of pizza the words of: “I WISH I was as healthy as you!!!” flood your ears.

But deep down, you want that piece of cake.

Deep down you wish you could sleep in an extra 30 minutes and skip your workout.

Deep down you want to throw your kale salad across the table and bite down into that oily, melty slice of heaven.

But you tell yourself no to it all, because the constant praises, flat abs, and ‘rockin bod’ make it all worth it.

Suddenly in a world in which everyone claims to be a wellness influencer, gluten free maniacs on every block, and pilates princesses whom promise a toned stomach in 20 minutes flood your IG feed, the so called “healthy lifestyle” has seemed to jump to the opposite end of the spectrum, the obsession with physical health, has lead many of us into a detrimental unhealthy emotional mental state. 

We are told to give up carbs and focus on protein-nope! Actually carbs are super great for you, so have them at every meal! Just make sure to avoid fats! Just kidding! Did you know fats actually increase life expectancy? Have them at every meal! WAIT! As of late the carnivore diet is back, a stick of butter a day keeps the doctor away!

It’s exhausting really.

I’m sure this upcoming question is swarming your brain as much as mine: when does being healthy become… well… unhealthy?

In many cases I think health has become gilded. On the outside it looks great, because the influencers and magazines say you will feel great, it looks like a golden life: glowing skin, your dream body, better gut health and so on. Just make sure you drink your celery juice every morning, give up gluten, and never eat a Cheez-It again

But at what point does this healthy lifestyle become a healthoholic obsession? When we carve away the glorious abs and kale salads the ugly truth is revealed: an obsessive mental state that makes you unable to have a New York bagel for fear that the naked carbs will ruin your progress.

While not officially recognized by the DSM, in the 21st century we have seen a rise of a new eating disorder: Orthorexia: “an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy/a medical condition in which the sufferer systematically avoids specific foods in the belief that they are harmful.”

An individual with this eating disorder can be at a perfect weight, have a perfect heartbeat, a great immune system and so on, yet their mental health that is fogged with the obsession and perfection of ‘clean eating’ becomes completely ruined.

It’s why this eating disorder is so hard to diagnose, unless we can physically dive into someone’s mental state you can never fully see who is struggling with this disorder. Yet like any mental and eating disorder, the point where being healthy goes too far is when we begin to lose ourselves, our freedom, and our life in the process.

It’s funny; we are taught that being unhealthy is one side of a spectrum, and healthy is the other, but this eating disorder just shows, at least in today's world, that health is a circle- a venn diagram- a constant cycle- where there are overlaps and constant changes it is impossible to claim to be completely one side or the other. If we are not considering our emotional, mental, and physical health for food we aren’t really being healthy. 

But the good news is I do think there is a way to stay balanced in this wellness circle, to find real health, mentally emotionally and physically.

No matter how good the constant praises feel in the moment, no matter how much you love your abs in your new instagram post, no matter how much you claim your daily green juice flushes out your toxins from the night before, nothing feels as good as midnight snacks at a sleepover, a warm toasty bagel with real cream cheese straight off the streets of New York, or snoozing your alarm for an extra 45 minutes to stay in bed for majority of the day. Because those are the moments where your body, mind, and soul relax into the state of living wholly, and a true smile of presence sweeps across your face.

Because when you are lying on your deathbed (no matter how cliche this sounds… sorry!) your gravestone won’t say:

“Catalina Bilandzija 2005-**** health queen who never missed a workout and never ate a donut!”

What you will be remembered by are the memories you made with people, in which you were completely present in eating whatever you wanted, and not worried about your morning run the day before. Where the kale salad looks great sometimes, but when your body whispers to you to have the pasta carbonara, you order it with no hesitation. Where you skip the 45 minute hiit workout and go for a walk instead because that’s what feels good to you. Where you realize the only “dirty eating” you need to worry about is not washing your lettuce before you eat it. 

That is what I believe to be true health.