I’m stealing this post title from a similar post that Megan wrote at the beginning of the month — because it’s so true. Food bloggers are normal people!
One question that I was asked at the Healthy Living Summit was:
Do you ever feel pressure to eat "perfectly" or "complete dinners" because of your blog?
The answer is, of course, yes! I display my meals for thousands of people each day; I naturally think about how it will be presented. I strive to eat enough veggies, plant-based protein, and whole grains and to limit discretionary calories to a balanced amount. All in all, blogging has made me a cleaner and more balanced eater. Hooray!
But sometimes… sometimes I just don’t care about vegetables. Or whole grains. Or any of that nutritional jazz. :)
When I have a bad day, my natural response to stress is to eat, eat, and eat. Before I realized that my stress eating was actually bad for my health, I kept things like cookies, potato chips, and ice cream in the house. I would promise myself that I would portion control these goodies, but then stress would hit and I’d inhale three servings of cookies before I even realized what I was doing.
Now, one of my life philosophies is: "Don’t set yourself up to fail." Since the Husband is also a huge stress eater, we don’t keep a lot of junk or treats in the house — maybe one or two things at a time. When we want ice cream, we go to the ice cream shop (which is about once a week!). This isn’t "depriving" ourselves ourselves at all. It’s basically a smart way to manage one of our bad habits (stress eating).
It’s rare that I "splurge" (I hate that term, by the way) at home because — seriously — it’s kind of hard to splurge on health food. For one, it’s GOOD for you, so it’s not a true "indulgence" (I also hate that term!). And two, who wants to eat stuff their faces with carrots after a crazy night at the bar? 🙂
This is a really tangential way (is anyone even still reading?!) of saying today was a stress-eating day, as much as it can be in my house. I snacked my way through the afternoon — but it was, luckily, all healthy snacks! I don’t get all worked up about stuff like this because I know it all balances out in the end. And sometimes, a little comfort eating is exactly what I need!
Here are my afternoon eats. Pickles:
Nuts (times three):
Crackers (times two, at least):
Watermelon:
And a huge bowl of granola + Greek yogurt (SO GOOD):
Obviously, I straight snacked away my appetite for a "real dinner"! And yet I did feel pressure to make a "real dinner" for the blog, but then I thought how silly that was — I’ve eaten a tons of healthy foods today and more than enough calories to maintain my active lifestyle.
So there you have it — food bloggers are normal people. Sometimes, I really would rather eat several servings of pickles, nuts, crackers, granola and yogurt, and watermelon than a "real" dinner. 🙂
You can't be perfect every day and I really don't think we all expect that anyway. 🙂