Ironically, I was the least healthy when I was yo-yo dieting throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. Starting in 7th grade, I masked my eating disorder and body dysmorphia by pretending to be a health & wellness nut. In reality, I didn’t care about being healthy- all I cared about was being thin.

Through the years, my weight fluctuated while my relationship to food plummeted. I attempted every diet under the sun, going all in on the diets’ crazy rules:

No white carbs.
Don’t eat until noon.
Sugar = poison.

However, every extreme diet I tried ended with me stress eating cookies dipped in peanut butter or binging on corn chips smothered in cheese and guac. I felt like such a failure. How come others girls can stick to a diet? I’d think, painfully unaware that hardly anyone actually adheres to their diet.

My sophomore year of college, I’d reached a breaking point when I noticed how out of breath I became when speed walking to catch the campus shuttle. My clothes were fitting tight, and I’d been ordering way too many Jimmy John’s subs after nights of drinking.

In true all-or-nothing fashion, I committed to going to the gym every morning for 30 days. During this time, I became utterly obsessed with the 2014 bodybuilder culture on Instagram. I started eating chicken and broccoli, choking down Quest protein bars (ew), and weighing every gram of rice that touched my tongue.

People around me began to notice a change, telling how disciplined I was. Being the “big friend” my whole life, I loved this newfound positive attention around my body. But I was terrified to lose it, so I buckled down on my diet and gym routine: no rest days, eat less than 90 grams of carbs, and count every calorie. Little did I know I was starving my body and setting myself up for years of recovery.

Because I was eating so little food while being so active, my body and mind rebelled. I soon started binge eating again, only this time was “clean foods.” While I’d microwave a midnight bowl of oatmeal smothered in dark chocolate chips, I’d eat almond butter by the spoonful. Still not satisfied, I’d steal my roommates’ popcorn and eat shredded cheese straight from the bag.

I felt like such a fraud. Here I was, a dietetics major who couldn’t control herself around food. I thought die if anyone knew the truth about me, so I’d swear off sweets and snacks the next day to make up for my feast.

It was not until I had lost my period for 6 months that I knew something in my body was off. My hair was brittle, my energy sucked, and I had lost my glow. Turns out I had hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA), a condition where hypothalamus causes your period to stop. HA is typically caused by overexercising, stress, and under eating. At the time, I was lifting heavy weights 5-6x times per week, sprinting on my “rest” days, and living on protein shakes in an effort to stay lean. Even though I was by no means underweight, I was a textbook case of HA. I felt broken- I was so scared!

My desire to have a family one day began to outweigh my obsession with being thin. I seized all high-intensity workouts, increased healthy fats and complex carbs in my diet, and gave myself extra rest days during the week. While it was challenging at first to break the move more, eat less mentality, it paid off big time! Within 3 months, I got my period back!

It took losing my menstrual cycle to realize that hey- I didn’t actually want to eat like an extreme, obsessive person. All that food tracking and second-guessing every choice I made was not worth having visible abs. I’d rather eat like a normal, healthy person. Someone who moves her body but shares an order of fries with her friends. Who enjoys meal prepping fresh and healthy foods but won’t say no a sweetened matcha latte. As a result, I no longer binge eat, feel ashamed about my choices, or pick apart every inch of my body in front of the mirror. I like how I eat and love how I feel.

It’s all about balance and for me, I find an 80/20 lifestyle works best. This is the mindset I teach my clients who are used to an all-or-nothing approach to healthy living and weight loss.

What 80/20 looks like for me probably looks different for you. If you’d like to create your own personalized approach to a balanced lifestyle by working with me 1:1, you can schedule an initial consultation at www.nutritionawareness.com.