Quinn Eats [Lots of Food]

One strategy that has been massively important in transforming my relationship with food is intuitive eating. I’ve talked a little bit about this before but essentially what intuitive eating means to me is that instead of going on a diet or any sort of restrictive meal plan, I’m going to eat what I want when I want it and trust my body to regulate itself.

 That may sound super scary—and it kind of was at first. After years of counting calories or carbs or any number of various statistics, it was pretty difficult to get into a mindset where I didn’t consider dessert an “indulgence” and didn’t feel worse about myself if I chose carb-loaded pasta rather than “healthy” salad for dinner. But really, intuitive eating helped me reach that place because it reminded me to listen to my body’s hunger cues and take time to understand what kind of foods my body is asking for—and to listen to those asks. I imagined that my body would only ask for ice cream or chips or pizza, but to my surprise, that’s not what happened at all. Now, I seek out balance in what I eat, and my body’s various food desires encourage that.

 To show you guys a little more about what this looks like, I’ve decided to catalogue two days of my own eating here as examples of how intuitive eating really works for me, and how different it can be on a day to day basis. I try not to stress about how many times a day I eat, what I eat, or when I eat it—and that’s what makes my body feel good, more so than cutting out dessert or forcing myself to eat veggies when I really want cheese and crackers. Okay, here goes! I hope this informative in one way or another.

 Day One
8:30 AM – I wake up, sadly at exactly the same time that my housemate gets in the shower. So, I get to lounge in bed a little bit before I get up to brush my teeth, eat some breakfast and head to the gym.

 9 AM – Breakfast: Trader Joe’s Peaches & Cream Yogurt Cup topped with a little vanilla almond granola
This is a pretty typical breakfast for me; it gives me some morning energy for exercising but doesn’t make me feel uncomfortably full during my workout. Plus, it’s nice to start the day with something a little bit sweet!

 11 AM – Snack: Trader Joe’s Breakfast Trek trail mix
I get home from the gym and I’m starting to get hungry again, so I have a handful of my favorite trail mix: almonds + dried cranberries + white chocolate chips + granola balls. These are such a good snack, especially because I buy them in pre-portioned little bags, so it’s super easy to get an appropriate serving size. It’s within a reasonable lunch hour, so I could have eaten a bigger meal, but I have lunch plans with my boyfriend at one, so I’m just trying to have a little snack to tide me over until then.

 1 PM – Lunch: small Caesar salad with chicken, two pieces of cheese quesadilla
Ugh, the school cafeteria. After a morning of sweeter food, I’m ready for something a little more substantial and savory. I am always in the mood for Caesar salad, even though dining hall chicken is somewhat questionable, so I grab that before I notice the goldmine of the day: quesadillas! Even the cafeteria can’t mess that up [although actually they can because last week I ended up with an empty quesadilla that didn’t have any cheese inside it]. I often have a dessert after lunch, like a cookie or brownie from the dining hall, but after two pieces of quesadilla and the salad, I was pretty full so I decided to skip it.

 2:30 PM – Snack: gluten free brownie
Okay, I actually didn’t realize this was gluten-free when I ordered it, but it was still good! I went for coffee at a local café with some friends, and although I wasn’t super hungry, grabbing a snack to eat while we hung out seemed like a good move. This is actually something that used to really stress me out—going out with friends to places with food where I would be expected to eat. In the past, I have avoided or cancelled plans because I felt that I couldn’t afford to spend that many calories. I’m thankful now that I feel very comfortable ordering a mid-afternoon dessert as part of the coffee shop ritual, and I can enjoy the company of my ladies without stressing about snacking.

 6 PM – Dinner: Apple Jacks with skim milk, potato salad
I’m in college, sue me. I recognize that this is not a particularly well-rounded dinner, but as I’ve mentioned, my school’s dining halls are really disappointing options-wise as the semester winds down. So, I picked the two things I found most appetizing. And here’s the best part—I don’t feel stressed about it. Sometimes you end up in a situation with very minimal food choices, and you just have to make the best of it. Intuitive eating lets me do that by enabling me to stop stressing excessively about my food intake.

 7:30 PM – Dessert: Baskin Robbins “Baseball Nut” ice cream
This is a great flavor. Everyone should try it: vanilla ice cream + raspberry jam swirl + cashews! Dave and I went for a walk in Colonial Williamsburg after dinner, and the weather was so perfect for a little bit of ice cream to go with our walk. I love a sweet end to a fun day!

 Reflection on Day One: I’m pretty happy with this day overall. I did have multiple desserts, but that doesn’t really concern me anymore as long as the rest of my food in a day is reasonable—and I would deem this food reasonable. Dinner is definitely an area that needed some work today, but unfortunately because of the options at the dining hall, I couldn’t really act on my intuitive eating strategies since I didn’t have that many choices to work with. The best thing about intuitive eating, from my perspective, is that these types of situations no longer make me feel stressed or guilty about my food. I have gotten much better about understanding how much food I actually need to get and stay full, and so portion sizes are a really important part of my eating habits that have become much more intuitive. Can’t wait to do more eating tomorrow! 

Day Two
9 AM – Wake up! Except that because I’ve become lazy now that finals are over, I actually tapped through a bunch of stories on Snapchat and browsed Instagram before I got out of bed for real.

 10 AM – Breakfast: Trader Joe’s Mango & Cream Yogurt Cup topped with a little vanilla almond granola
Yep, I’m predictable. Based on what I have in the house, I tend to go on week-long sprees of eating pretty much the same thing for breakfast. Yogurt is always a good one, but sometimes I get really into oatmeal or peanut butter toast.

 11:30 AM – Snack: Trader Joe’s Breakfast Trek trail mix
Yet again, I need a little pick-me-up between lunch and the gym. You get the gist.

 1 PM – Lunch: salad with hardboiled egg + shredded cheddar + black olives + ranch dressing, one slice of veggie pizza, one sugar cookie
It was pretty warm out in Williamsburg today, and warm weather tends to make me want foods that are a little fresher, so I chose a salad for the main part of my lunch today. Whenever I have salad, I try to add some other greens besides lettuce (today I did spinach) that are more nutrient-dense. Adding the slice of pizza and the cookie kind of rounded out this lunch for me.

 3 PM – Snack: three of my favorite ham + cheese roll-ups
In the midst of a lengthy process of cleaning and organizing my room before summer, I opted for an afternoon snack with lots of protein! I just roll up a slice of cheese and a slice of ham together, and a few of those make for a great afternoon meal. Also, the ham and cheese combo satisfies that salty snack desire that tends to hit me around this time.

 6 PM – Dinner: sourdough + muenster grilled cheese sandwich
Because I recently got paid and because I have no self-control at Trader Joe’s I made myself a delicious and ~fancy~ grilled cheese sandwich at the end of the night. After a lot of hard work on my room-cleaning project [okay, a lot of laying on my floor amidst piles of unfolded clothes], I wanted something warm and comforting to close out my day, and this sandwich really hit the spot!

 Reflection on Day Two: I had a pretty busy, active day today, and the food I ate really helped me power through all of it—and I actually did end up finishing cleaning my room! Although I don’t plan my meals at the start of the day, I think today’s food is a really good example of how my body’s hunger signals and desires helped me achieve a fairly balanced diet without too much effort on my own part. I try not to attach too much emotion to my food in general, but this is a day that I’m pretty proud of in terms of listening to my body and feeding it what it asks for in a way that helps me feel strong and healthy!

 So, what you have now is two days of eating out of my life. This was an interesting project for me—I haven’t recorded the food I eat in a long time. I decided not to do it on my Fitbit, because I didn’t want to be bothered by calories at all; I just didn’t need to be thinking about that. Even without that information, I had some observations that I thought I would share to wrap this up. First off, my diet is pretty regular. I think of myself as a “healthy” eater, and then when I read back this post to myself and really looked at the food I’m eating, I felt that maybe I was wrong about that. But then again, who’s to say what’s “healthy” and what’s not, if this is the food that makes me happy and I feel comfortable in my body eating this way, listening to the cues I’m given. The concept of “healthy” itself here seems a little bit fraught to me—I’m going to write another post about this soon because I’m intrigued by this idea. Who defines health, are there multiple viable definitions, and are there foods or practices that are inherently unhealthy even within the bounds of happiness and safety? I’m not totally sure yet, so I’ll definitely be exploring this topic a little bit more.

 Anyway, here is what I basically wanted to do with this post: I wanted to show you guys a glimpse into what intuitive eating means for me—and it will mean different things for any given person who practices it, I think. I also wanted you all to see that despite my status as a fitness blogger and avid runner, my diet is not necessarily stereotypically “healthy.” I don’t eat salad for every meal, sometimes I’m bad about getting my vegetables in, and I pretty much always eat dessert every day. And yet I’ve been able to lose weight and try new kind of exercises and become increasingly comfortable with my body over the past year. I guess my overall point here is that there are many ways of being healthy, but the most important thing is that your way makes you happy in a safe and manageable way. Intuitive eating is a big part of my way of being healthy, because it makes me feel good to trust my body and work towards this positive relationship with food that I aspire to reach (right now I would categorize my relationship with food as neutral, and it definitely was once negative). So, take this post as inspiration to give intuitive eating a try—or don’t! Just know that health doesn’t come in only one cookie-cutter shape, and enjoying food [and lots of it!] can be part of a healthy lifestyle.