I still remember the day that I decided to become “healthier” which meant to eat better and workout more often. It was the Monday after my 21st birthday which means that it was 10 years ago this week. After a crazy 21st birthday weekend I knew I needed to get myself together. The following spring I would be graduating college and I didn’t want to have to start from square one at that point.
I decided to exercise every day to be healthy
I told myself even if I just did a quick workout video at home at it would count. Before that, giving myself days off had been a slippery slope. First it was a day off Sunday. Then it became the whole weekend. Then I stopped working on out Fridays, too. And many days there were happy hours that I just couldn’t miss.
So this time I actually stuck to my plan. After it really became a routine I started taking days off here and there. Back then I wasn’t running anywhere near as hard as I run now. My gym visits were either a few easy treadmill miles or the elliptical, and weights.
I had also wanted to clean up my diet after my 21st birthday.
I wasn’t trying to “diet” but I knew I could lose a few pounds after spending the previous spring semester in London. (You really can’t drink Guinness every day and not gain weight). So my plan was to just “eat better”. Which is interesting to think about now because it is much different that how I think about eating these days. It was 2004 and society in general had a much different view of healthy eating. We were still coming off a low-carb kick and moving back towards the whole low-fat thing plus artificial sweeteners were pretty big.
Instead of eating pasta every night or take out or fried food from the college cafeteria, I started eating more microwave dinners. They seemed lower in calories and usually included vegetable and were low fat.
Instead of eating bagels for breakfast every.single.day I started eating cereal more. I’m pretty sure Special K was my cereal of choice. It was low fat AND sometimes you could even get dried berries in there!
It took me until I was in college to start eating yogurt. When I did of course I would need to choose the kind with no fat and no sugar. And the lowest amount of calories possible.
I might not have started eating these until after I moved home from college but I remember my mom and I always ate South Beach Bars. I remember eating them before I would got to the gym and always getting a stomach ache. But they were high in protein and low in carbs so I ate them anyway.
And of course I was drinking tons of coffee because I was a senior in college and the best way to sweeten it was with artificial sweetener of some kind. Splenda was more “natural” and all the hype at the time so of course that was what I used when it was available.
Another one of my favorite snacks around this time were the 100 calorie packs. I mean you could eat cookies and still be healthy! (Please note sarcasm). I’m really not trying to tell anyone how to eat, but in my opinion now if you want to eat cookies you should probably just eat real cookies. I kind of remember these tasting like cardboard.
Well that was quite a blast from the past! To be honest I was still eating Special K about a year ago (not often, but we kept it in our kitchen). We would also keep some Healthy Choice soups on hand. I will say again I am in no way trying to tell anyone how to eat or trying to tell you not to eat any of these foods. However, I have learned over the past decade that it is much more satisfying and fulfilling to eat real foods rather than diet foods.
- Do you remember the first time you started to eat “healthy” and what it meant to you?
- How have your thoughts on foods changed over the past decade?
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I lived on Dannon Light and Fit or whatever it was called as my lunch in my early twenties. It was the kind with the chocolate crunchies mixed in. Real heahlthy, huh? lol. I also loved 100 calorie pack cookies and recall eating a cookie dough type Weight Watchers bar as a snack not because I was on weight watchers but because I loved the taste. Such junk.
I wonder if you really loved the taste or if you loved the idea of being able to eat a cookie dough snack for so few calories. I know that’s kind of what I convinced myself about those kinds of foods!
Too funny. My diet was almost identical. I lived off of microwave dinners and I thought they were so healthy because they were low in calories. The Special K Red Berries was my breakfast probably everyday my senior year in college. I also kept a south beach diet bar in my purse at all times. I liked the cinnamon ones haha. I don’t think you could pay me enough to eat one of those now.
I haven’t looked at the ingredient list for the South Beach bars but I have a feeling its not pretty! Its so funny how at one point we thought the lower the calories, the better.
Yes to all of these! My roommates and I lived on Lean Cuisines senior year. I still rely on some of these things (particularly frozen dinners) for convenience, but I know better. One day and one meal at a time.
Sometimes we need to eat stuff like that for convenience- I think the key is trying to eat well most of the time, and being conscientious of our choices!
Oh and don’t forget the fiber one bars….
Yup I ate those too. I was still eating them up until a few years ago I think.
Hahaha! I was all about Special K or Total with yogurt for breakfast then a Lean Cuisine for lunch and maybe dinner too when I got out of college an started my first job. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but I definitely thought that was “healthy”.
Yes that sounds so similar to how I was eating! I really did think it was healthy but there was no way I was getting enough good nutrients!
Oh my gosh, I was totally guilty of the whole lowest fat/calories option of my favorite foods too! & I thought meal bars had to be healthy because, hello, I was getting the nutritional benefits of a full meal in only 200 calories- who wouldn’t want that?!
I credit reading It Starts With Food and doing the Whole 30 Challenge for showing me the value of eating real food. Looking back, it’s like I was in a fog from eating so much junk that claimed to be healthy. Now I’m so much more in tune withy body, and what works & what doesn’t. It just makes me sad how food companies take advantage of people’s perceptions of what healthy is. If only everyone had their own personal RD 😉
I definitely agree! Even though I never did the whole 30, but I read it, I try to follow many of the guidelines from it. I also am very aware of what I am eating- if I can’t explain where it comes from then I should probably be questioning if I should be eating it!
So funny how that happens as we grow older, you start to see the real value in food and it becomes more about what you want to eat instead of what you need to eat…
That’s true! At the time I started to eat what I thought was “healthy” I relied on women’s health magazines to guide my eating, which was not such a good idea! Now I like to read a lot of information and make more informed decisions.
I remember just eating whatever I wanted too 10 years ago. I didn’t care what I was putting in my body and never put together, eating like crap=feeling like crap! Real foods all the time now. So much more satisfying!
That’s so true and I hate that it took me so long to learn that! I was all about eating as little as possible (1200 calories seemed to be the number all the women’s magazines would say to aim for ) but I never really felt satisfied! I know I ate way too much junk because of this unhealthy approach.
That was fun! I had a very similar journey. I guess when we compare college eating to anything else, it’s not so bad, huh? But it can certainly get better from there and we’ve both improved quite a bit!
It is kind of funny to think of it that way- healthy choice microwave dinners are better than McDonalds, I guess. Looking back I hate that I put so much energy into eating what I thought was “healthy” and only recently learning just how far off I was!
This really says a lot about our culture. The fact that we are so misinformed about what is actually healthy and good for our bodies that companies and shill this processed crap as nutritious food and people actually believe it is sad. I am not at all attacking you as an individual – we have all been there, and most people still think this kind of eating is healthy. I find it encouraging every time I see a school that has a garden the students actively participate in or some other way of emphasizing eating whole, real foods. We need to start young if we are going to break the poor nutrition cycle perpetuated by consumerism and our culture!
I work at a school and I do my best to teach the kids I work with about healthy eating…which is extremely challenging at times! I also think the media in general is to blame along with the food companies that promote everything. I also think its hard for people to change their ways and change how they think about food. I know it took me a long time to really understand how important it is to much good food into my body.
I feel like I have always been a pretty healthy eater. I never liked eating cereal. I don’t find it as filling as eggs. I recently started eating bagels but only before my long runs. It’s seems to help me get through it.
It sounds like you were always intuitive about what your body needed, which is great! I think that when we start adding long runs into the mix our bodies sometimes require different fuel, so I’m glad you found something that works for you. I think its more important to focus on also getting lots of healthy nutrients in the rest of your foods!
I SO identify with this!! Now I won’t go near so many of those food items! Low cal and no sugar are a huge red flag for me! But I remember that was how I got started/interested in healthy living, so I guess it was a blessing in disguise!
Yes looking at it that way it was actually a good thing! It’s just amazing how deceived we all were for so long! And I think its all relative- eating microwave dinners is probably better than fast food, right?
I do remember eating a lot of Lean Cuisine frozen meals and those horrible Lays chips where the entire bag only had like 450 calories. I mean, I don’t even WANT to know what’s in those things that make them so low calorie for an entire big bag of chips! I do know they came with some … er side effects that were no bueno! haha.
I do think that if people are making really unhealthy food decisions that taking a transition period can be okay. For instance, if you’re just getting started with healthy eating and adding some splenda to your plain yogurt makes you reach for that instead of a super unhealthy option, it’s the right thing to do, you know? It’s all a journey!! At least that is what I told myself after the marathon while I was ordering literally everything on the menu 🙂 haha
I know exactly which chips you are talking about and it gives me a stomach ache just thinning about them:)
I love your point about using some time for a transition period. I think its all about working to make better choices and even if it takes some time to get where you want to be at least you’re moving in the right direction!
It has been so tough to break my husband out of this mindset! Even his own experience with whole30 hasn’t completely sold him on the “fat doesn’t make you fat” thing! We all believed these things were healthy for so long, and it’s been a huge relief for me that REAL FOOD in all it’s yummy-ness is the true healthy stuff. I mean did anyone really feel good eating lean cuisines? I did not!
I never felt good AT ALL eating lean cuisines or anything like that and I left like it was gone in 2 bites.
My husband is the same way. He is really nervous to eat too much red meat, egg yolks, etc. I told him he isn’t allowed to eat “I can’t believe its not butter” anymore and he was so confused! It real can be hard to change our mindsets when we have believed certain things for so long.
Ha. This was a blast from the past for me too. My eating habits have changed a lot since high school and even college. There was a time I would never touch greek yogurt and now I put it on my oatmeal, use it as my sour cream for potatoes, and use it to make pancakes. My artificial sweetener consumption has gone down a lot too and rather than put a bunch of junk in my coffee, I just have it with milk now. And I didn’t even know almond butter was a thing back then…how tragic lol 🙂
I don’t think I knew about almond butter until like 2 years ago! I feel like I was missing out on so many good things back then, and putting way too much effort into eating things that actually weren’t even “healthy”!
Girl, I used to eat all of the same things. All fat free, sugar free, low cal….yuk!
It’s so crazy to think about it now but for so long I lived off all that stuff!
Did you have a sweet aftertaste in your mouth for most of the day? All of that food is artificial! I can’t believe we used to think it was healthy, and if it had little to no calories, it didn’t count.
I used to eat ‘healthy’ too, and thought that I needed to exercise my butt off to lose weight. Interesting enough, I was gaining weight from all the sugar! Now I’m paleo + a bit of dairy and haven’t looked back. I also lost 10.5kg, built muscle and became a far better runner.
I can’t believe how much emphasis we used to put on calories. I mean I know a lot of people still do, but I feel like we are maybe moving towards understanding that all calories are not equal. I don’t remember if I had an aftertaste from that stuff but I’m sure if I tried to eat any of it now I would notice! I’m so glad that you find a way to eat that works for you and keeps you happy and healthy!
Wow this really puts into perspective how much society has changed in terms of healthy eating!
Yes, I think (hope) we are moving in the right direction!
We were just having a conversation about this the other day! My hubby and I used to eat Smart Ones from time to time including their desserts. Ugh, horrible! I also often at healthy choice soups, low fat wheat things, Fiber one bars and Jiffy “Natural” peanut butter. So glad I’ve changed my ways!
I used to eat all of those things too! It’s so crazy that we truly believed that those things were healthy!
Wow you just took me back completely-I used to eat cannon light and fit yogurt every morning and I think they were only about 40 calories!!! And I remember telling myself I was full when I CLEARLY could not have been!! Special K was also a staple in my diet. I would sooooo much rather eat a real, well balanced meal now though full of “real food!!!
I think I also convinced myself I was full from those foods- but in reality I probably just had a stomach ache!
Boy do I resonate with this. About a year ago, all I would eat was low calorie/fat snacks. Aaand I pretty much classified that as being healthy! But not only did they not taste very good, they never managed to satisfy my craving so I would inevitably end up bingeing later on. Now, like you said, I think its best to just satisfy your craving by eating the real thing (in moderation of course!)
Exactly! I think you just said exactly why its so much better to eat real foods- the fake stuff just doesn’t leave you satisfied that there’s a reason why they don’t! I mean they have way less nutrients so it makes sense. The real thing in moderation is so much better:)
Oh man! I think so many of us went through this “healthy” phase! I definitely have eaten tons of dannon fat free yogurts, low-calorie processed cereals and sugar free sweeteners. It’s amazing how much my knowledge of what’s healthy has changed…whole foods it is!
I definitely agree! It’s so much more satisfying to eat real food!
OMG this is ME when I was 22-29!!!! That’s a long time to be delusional.
I think so many people were in this mindset for a good decade or so! Im glad there is new info out now that will hopefully get people to think of food differently!