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Food Obsession – The Hypocrisy!

Food obsession is often so hypocritical…

A personal training client and I were chatting on recently about a topic that had been raised by one or two worried parents at his daughters’ school.

Basically, they wanted to know the sugar content of all the meals available at school so they could make allowances at home with their kids diets.

It was probably the most middle-class thing I’d ever heard. Seriously, how high in sugar can school meals be?

I’m all for conscious decisions around food and encourage everyone to make sure they make good choices, but for goodness sake, there’s a line. It seems that for some people, food obsession is getting a little out of hand.

Yes, take care of the ‘big rocks’ – eat plenty of vegetables, eat with the seasons, eat lean, well-sourced meats and fish. Keep your carbohydrates from clean sources and eat good fats. Take in plenty of water and keep the booze low, but draw the line somewhere. You have to live a little. Food obsession is getting a little out of hand.

food obsession

Food obsession can cause stress and anxiety – I’ve seen it with personal training clients. It can also cause rebellion and a back firing against the ‘rules’. I know people who were raised by super-strict parents who rebelled as adults and turned into drug-abusing, heavy-drinking dropouts. It’s like the cliche stripper who went to a strict all-girls school and now gyrates on stage for £20 for three minutes.

Actually, that’s a solid hourly rate. Sod personal training….

Anyway, back to the main point – food obsession.

Thanks to the narcissist paradise that is Instagram, we have a snapshot (well, the bits they want to show) into the lives of some fitness models – their training, their diets, their lifestyles. I did a little research on them a while back for a piece I was writing and found it ironic that they so openly spoke about avoiding toxins, demonising foods with chemicals in them, drinking only mineral water etc.

So why exactly is that ironic?

Well, many of the people talking about ‘food toxins’ will then go and pose on stage having smothered their skin in chemical-laden fake tan. They earn a living by having photographs taken of them whilst they are covered in heavy make up, with styling products all over their hair!

Oops!

Didn’t think that the products you put on your skin could be absorbed into the body? Errrr, topical medicines? Ever rubbed a cream on a skin infection? Ever used muscle rub?

Yup, your skin is porous. What you put on your skin is absorbed into your body. There are more ways to ingest toxins than just eating them.

There are people who won’t eat a piece of chocolate but will think nothing of having a tattoo, with ink injected into their dermis. (By the way, I’m not against tattoos and have no evidence to suggest they aren’t safe, but if we’re on the subject of not sticking chemicals in your body…)

The ex-wife of a friend of mine used to have regular vitamin injections, would only buy organic fruit and vegetables, was vegetarian yet have botox every six months and snort her way through a bag of cocaine every weekend.

Yeah, she would snort cocaine off a nightclub toilet but wouldn’t eat red meat because it’s bad for you. Hilarious.

Let’s get some perspective and balance back.

By taking care of the main points – eating well, exercising often, sleeping well and enjoying some relaxation you’ll be healthy and happy. 

Don’t let yourself go down the rabbit hole of obsessing about everything and making your life clean and toxin free, because I’ll tell you something – it’s almost impossible to live a chemical free life.

You’ll soon learn that paint is chemical-based and you’re probably breathing those chemicals in, that you can’t live in a city because of traffic fumes, that living by an airport will expose you to jet fuel fumes, that the strip lights in your office are emitting bad light, that your TV and laptop are exposing you to radiation, that your mobile phone will give you cancer, that your water supply has chemicals in, that your toothpaste will give you cancer, that your fillings will give you cancer and on and on.

Health is about balance – tipping it in your favour as much as you can, but not obsessing over the minute details that will probably see you stressing for little reason.

For the sake of your health, relax. Eat well. Sleep well. Exercise often.

You can spend all day worrying about everything you eat, but you know what is one of the most unhealthy things of all?

High stress levels.

P.S. I’m giving away a FREE eBook ‘101 Health and Fitness Tips’ to everyone who subscribes to my VIP email list. By joining the list you’ll have access to exclusive content, discounts, offers and products from both me and selected partners. Click here to download!

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HoylesFitness

Owner of www.hoylesfitness.com. Personal Trainer, Father and fitness copy writer. Working hard making the world fitter and healthier!

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