The other day I made a loaf of bread. It took approximately ten seconds to mix, baked up beautifully, and tasted great. That’s when it fully hit me: I’ve been on a crash course to healthy living burnout for the last year or so.
It all started with a bread mix that I bought at the health store down the road. Just a simple gluten-free whole grain bread mix. The kind with a packet of yeast where you add some eggs and oil, mix ‘er up, and let it rise. Simple as heck.
Guess what – I didn’t touch that mix. I gave it the ol’ side-eye and just flat-out ignored it for a solid eight months.
It was one of the easiest semi-healthy things in my kitchen. A convenience food that was far healthier than the store-bough stuff I had been buying, yet I still could not manage to motivate myself to just bake the freaking loaf of bread.
image via flickr cc
Why couldn’t I?
Because I was burned out. I was fed up to here with making an extra effort in a hundred different ways to be ALL THE KINDS OF HEALTHY. I was so totally over making a bajillion tiny baby steps toward better health that all just got wadded up to a gigantic, unbearable burden of stress and exhaustion.
I found myself rebelling against my own carefully culled ideals, throwing certain standards out the window in the name of survival mode and stress relief. I ignored that dumb package of bread mix and bought gluten-free bread at Costco instead.
I hated living that way. But I also resented the unbearable pressure of living up to my own sky-high ideals. (Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with having high ideals. It’s more about how you go about achieving them.)
The last five years (coincidentally also the years of my healthier lifestyle journey thus far) have been wrought with stress and major life events like moving across the country and birthing a bunch of gorgeous babies in rapid-fire succession. Also: being married has felt more like hard work than a fairytale (I know – shocker.)
Then one day I realized that I had unwittingly just stopped caring so much. I began making compromises in our diet but then beating myself up for them.
We gained a bit of weight, felt smooshy and sluggish and achey-painy, and we gained the unwelcome companions of hopelessness and indifference.
That’s when we started doing things like eat out and throw restraint out the window, in the name of “just this once” which became “on a very regular basis” quite quickly. I nodded along to the blog posts and articles about the dangers of GMO’s and white sugar and refined flour and then turned around and consumed them without restraint.
I felt like a hypocrite for denying myself a cupcake at the coffee shop because for heaven’s sake: I had ordered a half-sweet white chocolate mocha. I felt like a fool for ordering a white chocolate mocha because I *do* believe that things like that affect my body adversely. I KNOW BETTER. But I couldn’t bring myself to care.
So what happened?
I think a couple of specific factors played a role in my healthy living burnout.
1. Elitists & strict rules
I will never be an elitist when it comes to food. When I first began bursting out of the SAD (Standard American Diet) mindset five years ago I started by reading some blogs that were very, shall we say… militant in their approach. No stone left unturned, no ingredient compromised.
Their idea of an unhealthy meal was non-organic frozen green beans steamed with butter, baked chicken from the grocery store, and mashed non-organic potatoes. (The pesticides! The CAFO meat! The starchy white potatoes that turn into sugar in your body and contribute to belly fat! Run away!)
Good grief. I cannot and will not ever knock a meal that makes a legitimate effort to be healthy and from scratch, no matter how “perfect” it may or may not be. Perhaps we all still have some learning to do to figure out the ideal diet. Maybe that knowledge will not come this side of eternity, I don’t know. I do know, however, that I can eat pretty dang healthy without having to be an elitist over every tiny detail.
I also know that the meal I just described is 98% better than a can of chef boyardee or a box of kraft dinner. And that’s worth something.
I am also not at all a fan of the crazy strict rules that go along with that mentality. I do not want to ever be in a place where I have to refuse hospitality or community because I simply cannot bend my own paradigm even a tiny bit to accommodate other diets and choices. I cannot do it. I believe that compromising the relationships in my life will have as much of a health effect as my diet.
2. Psychological pull to old habits
The discussion around diet and health in our culture usually seems to center around one main factor: willpower. But that’s not what it’s about, really. It isn’t about how strong you can be in resisting that cupcake, and then patting yourself on the back when you do.
There is a very real psychological component to our eating habits that is rarely discussed. There are two cravings that typically work against us: 1) the craving to be “normal” and accepted like everyone else and 2) the cravings for the popular substances to which we are addicted (think: sugar, caffeine, carbs, etc.)
In It Starts With Food, the authors talk about how we are addicted to food and unable to stop eating stuff that’s bad for us, despite our best efforts. They say:
“It’s not your fault. You are not lacking willpower. You are not lazy. And it’s not your fault that you can’t stop eating those foods. Now, we’re not trying to say that the choices you make aren’t your own or that you don’t have any responsibility for your current health status (or waistline). But what you have to understand is that these unhealthy foods have an unfair advantage. They are designed to mess with your brain. They are built to make you crave them. They make it hard for you to give them up.”
This really resonates with me. The guilt and shame of making unhealthy choices only hinders our efforts, I think. So if we can remove those negative feelings, that’s a huge step forward.
3. Exhaustion and stress
Let’s face it: these little years can be overwhelming. Between the sleep-deprivation and the child-rearing (they are supposed to turn into responsible, compassionate, and kind adults but no one knows how exactly), a lot of young mamas are in a perpetual state of fatigue and overwhelm. Not exactly a recipe for success when it comes to implementing lots of new and foreign concepts into your life, most of which do require extra work on your part.
We also experienced a cross-country move, job losses, marriage stress, unemployment, and considerable financial difficulty. All of these factors worked against us when it came to energy and time.
How do I get back on track?
1. Consider a reset
Do you feel like you need to press the reset button? Are you addicted to sugar? Enduring “minor” daily health concerns? Always feeling fatigued? Maybe you need to consider a sugar detox, a cleanse, or a radical diet for more serious health issues such as the GAPS diet or Whole 30. Maybe you need to set some ground rules for yourself and hold yourself accountable.
2. Remember one important fact
It’s a small but important distinction – Food is Not a Moral Issue. As I’ve said before: “The thing about elevating the importance of food above community is that you start missing out. You can miss out on community and social interaction; you miss out on real relationship – or worse – you can harm relationships… We can acknowledge that certain things are healthier than others without attaching shame and guilt to them. It’s true, honest.”
3. Set one goal
People who have achieved big goals in life will inevitably tell you that it takes intentional planning in order to achieve big goals. Decide right now which one next step you want to take in your healthy living journey, and forget about the rest. One slow goal at a time is better than overwhelm that leads to giving up altogether (and I am SO preaching to myself here.)
I recently starting brewing kombucha, and I love it so much. I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and singing la-la-la really loudly when the rest of the “should-do’s” start pounding on my door. I’ll move on to the next thing when I’m good and ready, thank-you-very-much.
***
Now that life has inched forward a tiny bit from the crazytown of babies and cross-country moves and exhaustion, I find my motivation is making a comeback.
It’s slow but sure as I find within me a strong desire to live with intention when it comes to my body. I am more aware than ever before that each small choice I make toward a healthier lifestyle and diet is an act of worship to He who created me in the beginning. My body is intricately and lovingly designed by a Creator, and I want to honour Him with it. That includes pursuing health as much as I am able.
Healthy living burnout can happen to absolutely anyone, and if I’m being honest – I suspect it happens far more often than anyone cares to admit. I felt ashamed about it for a long time, thinking it was somehow my fault. I now realize that the shame was only weighing me down and preventing me from moving forward.
I have been fairly open about my non-strict rules and my lapses at times despite my better judgment, but even I can tell you that it can get rather lonely up here on a “natural living blogger” pedestal. Burnout is real and it is insidious. Thankfully, I’m on the upswing again.
Rachel
Thank you so much for posting this. After a few years of feeling my healthiest, adhering to every real food rule out there, the last year caused me to regress to the person I was before I even knew about the real food movement. Lately I’ve been wondering, “How did I get here?” Burnout, plain and simple. Time to hit the reset button, but I’m going to do it right this time. I’m going to do it out of love for myself and my family rather than the fear instilled by the “militant” rules that made me worried and guilt-ridden before.
Nikki
I’ve been experiencing healthy living burnout for the last few months, actually. Because of sever health issues, I jumped full-force into healthier eating, but it was not to a degree that I could maintain. I started slipping up, and then had the mindset that “I’ve already eaten this, so I may as well eat this.” Thanks for the encouragement!
Yohannes
Hi Beth,
This is a very powerful post. You nailed it in the head why we all go through this cycle, taking one step forward and two steps back. We cannot seem to achieve our health or weight goals.
It is so tough during an outing to see people eating YOUR favourite food, while you chew on your salad without dressing and drinking your bitter Americano. You do hate yourself and wonder why are you doing this to yourself.
That’s why it is important to have ‘cheat meals’ once a week. Treat it as a reward. Or something worth your effort to work towards without compromise. If you have a gathering, make that your cheat meal and be disciplined for the entire week. Make it flexible and follow it through.
Rebecca C
LOVE this post! I used to be so good about eating healthy, and actually enjoyed cooking from scratch several times a day. Well, at 12 weeks pregnant, that has not really happened lately! Being pregnant is a good thing (great thing, in fact, we’ve been fighting infertility and miscarriages for over 2 years), but it has left me exhausted, sick, and really unable to stomach a lot of cooking odors. It is a little funny actually, because of all the times I want to be eating healthy, it’d be while I’m pregnant! Nope… it is just so much easier to just get a drive-thru burger, and I can actually keep those down. Ugh! Hopefully our eating will get better now that I can handle smells and stuff. I actually meal planned today for the first time since late January. This post made me feel slightly better about not meeting my usual standards of eating. 🙂
Sara Tarallo
Beth! This is by far one of the best articles I have come across. It is exhausting to try to live a life that many people have given up on. On my blog, growingwellness.wordpress.com, I am trying to focus on the mental health benefits of living a more natural lifestyle. However, you nailed it here with how a person’s mental health can also be negatively impacted by the exhaustion all of this hard work. Thank you for your perspective. I have passed it along!
beth@redandhoney
Thanks so much, and thanks for sharing!! 😀
Leanne Penny
Love your blog, I think we had similar 2013s. Cross country move, unemployment and little ones. I am in the middle of a whole 30 and feeling pretty exhausted by it, yet refusing to give up.
I love what you’ve said here, especially the part about not sacrificing community on the altar of food restriction and belief. So much grace here.
beth@redandhoney
Leanne, thanks for your comment – I feel the same way – exhausted, but refusing to give up. I think lots of grace is what will get us through. xo.
sarah @ little bus on the prairie
Up top, sister! *high five*
beth@redandhoney
backatcha! 😀
Christy
This is so me! I’m in burnout right now & am trying to figure my way out. I’ve always been pretty healthy but the last 10 months have been a crash course in real food cooking. With two little ones, no dishwasher & health problems of my own the burnout has been a big problem. Thanks for the encouragement, praying we can get back on track here soon!
beth@redandhoney
Sometimes life is stacked against those lofty ideals of ours, eh? Praying we can both find some balance again soon. xo.
Marianne
You have put my thoughts and feelings into print. I need to get back to my healthy living. Just seems so hard to get motivated.
beth@redandhoney
It’s like a catch-22, right? Eating crap makes us sick and tired, which leaves no energy for the extra effort of the healthier choices. Ugh. I hear ya!
Doreen
Thank You Beth!!! Another great post! Eating healthy is a choice. A choice that more and more families are choosing to make. How we make those choices is just as diverse. The point is, do what you can do within your own budget and comfort level. As long as you try to stay away from processed foods and fast food, you are already making a healthier choice. As parents we all want to fuel our family with the best we can. The eating habits you teach your children today will be the ones that they use when they leave the nest and the ones they teach to their children. And remember, we must never beat ourselves up for not being as green or crunchy as someone else. We are all beautiful and smart mom’s! Love reading your blogs Beth!
beth@redandhoney
Thank-you so much for your sweet comment, Doreen! xo.
Joanna
Amen. Your point about the junky food having an advantage is so true! And totally overlooked in our society. Once I realized that it was very freeing for me. It also helps me keep on track when I just want a Pepsi already! LOL We recently started GAPS to heal some autoimmune & digestive issues in our family & it’s definitely been a journey. We’re not currently doing the diet properly, more just living within the restrictions of it. But that’s okay. We’re hanging out here for a bit gathering our energy to revisit Intro & make sure we’re getting enough broth & fermented foods & doing the supplements correctly, etc.
As for social situations, it is tough. I just try to remind myself that it’s still important to show up even if you can’t eat a thing. I do still have that feeling of “crap what if there’s food?!” but I just tell myself “so what!” and go anyway. In adult situations it’s been just fine. It’s rare that there’s not a thing I can have. Usually there’s some sort of salad (sans dressing) or fruit/veggie/cheese type of thing. f there’s literally nothing I can eat then I just don’t eat & spend that time chatting. (I try to always eat before get togethers.)
For dd it’s a little tougher as she’s only 2 1/2 and doesn’t understand why she can’t have certain things. But I’ve found that I’m able to navigate it with just a bit of forethought. For a Valentine’s Day party I brought grain free cupcakes (that were actually really delicious!) so she could have a cupcake. She did see that there were other cupcakes & wanted those but I just said “only one cupcake and you already had yours.” At church they’ve been very understanding about no cheerios or goldfish. I think the rise of food allergies in kids actually works to our benefit here. She’s not alone in diet restrictions. I always do provide a snack for her, though, so she can eat when the other kids eat. Sometimes the kids want what she has! (fruit, cheese, nuts)
I also think something that helps is the mentality of keeping it simple. Maybe a “meal” is just carrots, applesauce & some leftover meat or soup from the day before. That’s totally fine, actually it’s awesome! It doesn’t always have to be gourmet. (I must remind myself of this one pretty much daily!)
Emily @ Live Renewed
I resonate SO SO much with the first part of this post! Now I need to start resonating with the second half!! Ha! GREAT post!
Denise
I agree with you in many ways. In fact, I believed a lot of the same things until a few months ago. What you are saying is probably good advice for people without health problems. But I had to change my ways and become extremely strict in our diet. You see, my son has serious GI issues, along with Aspergers. I suffer from migraines, asthma and allergies. I compromised on our diet for a long time. I said, “I’d rather have my son attend youth group and eat junk than not attend.” I could not bring myself to be strict in social situations, like you mentioned. But our issues continued to get progressively worse. I knew I had to draw the line and say “absolutely no unhealthy food, for any reason, anywhere.” It has been so hard! But we are making progress with our health. We still have a way to go, but we’re getting there. My point is that there are times when healthy eating trumps social considerations.
Catherine
Denise, I hear you 100%!! Oddly – you and I have the same exact health issues and so does my older son. (BTW, he is now 23 years old and has grown into a happy, well-adjusted adult who loves his job as a softwre developer. 🙂 When my son was little, I bought some treats for him at the healthfood store and before dropping him off at events where would be faced with food-coloring laced goodies, I would tell him he could have one of the treats I’d bought for him in the car on the way home if he didn’t eat the junk-food that going to be offered to him at the social event (Sunday School was the worst!) He was my child who would sooner dive head-first into a cement swimming pool that had no water than tell a lie, so I knew when he said he hadn’t eaten anything that he really hadn’t. This enabled him to enjoy the social events without turning into a raving lunatic afterwards!
Yes, it really is dfficult to have NO choice about eating healthy!! I am sensitivie to gluten, dairy, corn, peanuts, all chemical additives, etc. Sometimes I just really wish I could call Dominos and have dinner delivered to our door, but no can-do! However, the good thing about sticking to our diet requirements in social settings is that we have discovered another family who are on a similar health journey and now we have each other over for dinners and for special events. I bet our little 2-family Super Bowl party was one of the very few Super Bowl parties where Doritos were not served! 🙂
Blessings to you and your family!
Catherine
Emily
Really great post. You’ve captured what a lot of us have been thinking!
Sherry
Great post!! It’s nice to see you aren’t militant about all of these crazy health ideals that people have! It’s crazy trying to live like that and it’s not really all that encouraging to others. It’s nice to have standards, but we all need to live a little, right?!
Tessa@TessaTheDomesticDiva
I hear you sister! My lofty ideals STRESS me out, and I KNOW that stress is just as hard on me too. Being a momma is hard enough, especially when you have little ones with food allergies and making every single item they eat is a reality.
I too have to just LET IT GO sometimes, I have to shut of my brain and just LIVE sometimes too. Not that it is easy, I sometimes wish there was a little switch I could flip and turn off a part of brain that holds all the information so I don;t inwardly cringe when we eat something I would prefer we didn’t…because your right…idealistic standards = social isolation. Thanks for sharing your heartfelt words with us, you are most definitely NOt alone!
Kelly @ The Nourishing Home
LOVE this post, Beth! I think if we’re all honest here we can admit, we’ve all been here before. I personally got SO burnt out that I almost went into a depression of sorts. It was shortly after I had tried to conquer the world – well, not really the world, but my little world. After I was dx with gluten sensitivity and realized that was no longer on the table for me (literally), I had this I can make everything myself from scratch mindset, only to find myself months later in complete exhaustion physically and mentally. There is a fine balance to strike. I cannot have gluten, but that doesn’t mean I have to make every single thing from scratch. And like you said, this isn’t a moral issue (eating healthy) and so we need to be especially careful to not let it take over as an idol in our hearts. Because nothing but God should have our extreme commitment and passion in life. Thank you SO much for sharing your wisdom here. You provide such a great perspective on not only what can lead us to healthy living burn-out, but also how to get back on the path again toward taking small steps forward in healthier living. Blessings to you, sweet friend! xoxo
Naomibell
This is terrific! So liberating to know I am not alone. I have been soooo sick with this pregnancy (baby #6) that my ideals are foggy dreams. But it is merely a season and my growing a person is taking a lot of work 🙂 We have to be gluten free due to celiac disease (all 5 kids plus my hubs and I) and that is taking enough energy now. Thanks for the honesty and encouragement! (Oh and I loved!! your post the other day on no-poo powder!!) <3
Mara
Me too! I am pregnant with my first and was sick (not to mention tired ALL the time) enough in the first trimester that the thought of even cooking dinner made me sick. I definitely fell off the healthy eating bandwagon, and consequently my Irritable Bowl Syndrome (IBS) symptoms returned. I’m just starting to get back on track cutting out gluten and trying to eat healthy again. I’m very encouraged that I’m not alone in this struggle!
Heather
I felt as though you were reading my mind! My husband and I had gone vegetarian and then vegan a few years ago after lots of work and dedication. A move, pregnancy and now baby have completely overturned our eating habits. I feel guilty every trip to the grocery store and every meal I eat that I’m not following through with what we worked so hard to achieve. We hope to get back to that point one day but know that right now all we can do is try our best and not burden ourselves with the guilt. Thank you for sharing and making some of us feel not so alone!
Audria
Sending a hug and a virtual fist pound your way. I am exactly in your boat with the three babies in four years and guilt over feeding them something less than Sally Fallon worthy. I love this post. Encouraging and inspiring. One day our babies will be dressing themselves and we can make all the soaked and fermented grassfed liver filled food we want. 😉