It was one of those sleepless nights for me.
It's been hot where I live, I spent the day out on the lake playing on a stand up paddle board, I got too much sun, didn't drink enough water, and didn't eat enough carbs before going to bed.
You see, it had been a long and fun-filled day, but I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to shoot for trying out nutritional ketosis, so instead of eating the bowl of oatmeal that I initially felt like I wanted when I got home, I ate an apple with a lot of almond butter, and then some more almond butter, and then some macadamia nuts.
You see, when aiming for ketosis, you want to keep your net carbs low (net carbs being total carbs minus fiber) and your fat high, so your body will utilize fat for energy instead of glucose. The way to do this is to eat more fat, but it takes a few days (sometimes a week or more) for your body to switch into ketosis, and it isn't usually pleasant, you feel lethargic, hungry, cranky, foggy, and all sorts of other unpleasant stuff when making the switch, especially if you've never done it before.
So why did I think I wanted to be in ketosis?
Well, the truth of the matter is, I'm a tinkerer, and a self-experimenter, and even though 90% of the time I have fabulous body-love, I'm still human and subject to all of the same insecurities and self-doubts that we're all subject too.
As a health coach I feel like this is particularly true. Many health people I know got in to it out of a desire to heal themselves, and when they started finding out what worked for them, they became passionate about it and wanted to start helping others feel as amazing as they do.
Most health coaches are also self-experimenters, mostly because if you don't know what something is like, how can you recommend it to someone else? So as a breed, I think we tend to be the kind of people who are always looking for the next best thing, the bio-hack to improve our health, because if we feel good, we can feel better right?
Maybe.
Recently the idea of nutritional ketosis had been showing up in my life in a few different ways, one in the form of another successful health coach who has an awesome 30-day guide all about it, and in the form of someone I know on social media talking about how amazing she is feeling being in ketosis and how lean it's getting her.
I'll admit, that the 'lean' part of both of their stories is what really prompted me to want to try it.
There are some know health benefits to being in ketosis, but for women there are also some known health issues, mostly when it comes to throwing off hormones, which will in turn affect EVERYTHING about a person's health. In (HEALTHFUL PURSUIT'S) book and blog she talks about the need for women to do carb-refeeds every 3-4 days in order to keep your hormones balanced, which means every few days you are intentionally taking yourself out of ketosis (after getting yourself in to it for 30 days).
Which begs the question, is it really a healthy and sustainable way to be?
For these two women it seems to be, which is awesome and a big party of the reason it appeals to me, that and the fact that they both talk about how sexy they feel and how their bodies are dropping fat left and right...who doesn't want that?
Well not everyone will, but a lot of women do for sure, and I'm not immune to the idea either. Despite the fact that I truly do want to live a healthy and happy life, and that I have a loving partner who adores the way I look no matter what, I am still subject to the same vanity everyone else is. I still want to look killer in a bikini, and to not have to worry about how my clothes fit.
It's hard to say if this is a natural part of being human, or if it's a product of society's focus on physical attributes, but I know that for me, those thoughts are always present in the back of my head.
The good side to our culture's obsession with looks is that it can often be a powerful motivator for people to change their lifestyle to just be healthier, in fact I'll freely admit that I capitalize on this all the time, and I'm ok with that. If someone's main motivation for coming to talk to me about fitness and nutrition is because they want to loose weight, great, then do exactly what I tell you to do and I promise you will be healthier, and most likely, because you're healthier and your body is getting what it truly needs, then you'll stabilize at a happy weight for you.
The problems arise when someone is at a stable place (like me) and yet they still feel like they need to do more. This is partly human nature, (at least for me, I always feel like there is more to do, perks of being an entrepreneur I suppose) and partly the influence of society telling us what we should look like.
It is important to always be paying attention to what you're doing, fueling yourself well, exercising regularly, sleeping, you don't want to just stop doing all this once you've gotten started down the path towards better health, because it truly is a lifestyle, forever, not just something you do for 6 months then go back to what you did before.
It's a problem when you're body is healthy and you are feeling good, yet you seem to think you need to change things.
In the middle of the night when I wasn't sleeping, I was reading other health personalities stuff ('cause that's what I do) and I came across this quote, which isn't new, but it reminded me of a really important thing:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Duh.
My problem is that I was reading these other women's stories and somehow thinking I needed to be like them and do what they do, even though I'm already healthy and already happy. I've already found my homeostasis point, and sure, I fluctuate a bit here and there (we ALL do), but for the most point I feel pretty damn good. I don't need to try anything else because I've already found my happy place.
Now, if I hadn't, then maybe it would be a good idea for me to give their way of doing things a try, partly because that's another really important thing I've learned while doing this:
If what you're doing isn't working for you, you owe it to yourself to try something different.
That's what I did when I stopped eating dairy, and then soy, and then gluten and eggs. Those things weren't working for me, so I stopped doing them.
The same could be said for the time I tried to be vegetarian. I lasted a whole week. I seriously could not stop thinking about chicken, and I figured that if my body wanted it that bad then I must need it, so as much as a love the idea of being a vegetarian, it's not for me, and that's ok, it works great for some people.
So why do I think my need for carbs is any different? All I could think about as I was eating the almond butter was how much I wanted to eat my oatmeal. The almond butter tasted good, but I could feel myself eating more than I probably needed because I was trying to make up for the lack of giving myself what I really needed...not exactly a healthy thing to do.
Many people may hear this and say "well that's exactly why you need to try ketosis, so you don't crave those carbs," but I'm not sure it is really a craving, I know what a craving is and it doesn't feel like that, it feels more like a deep seated, my body is telling me it needs this specific nourishment kind of thing, and I ignored it.
Bad health coach.
So this morning the first thing I did was make my usually smoothie for breakfast, and then sat and listened to my body, and guess what, I still wanted the oatmeal, so I ate it.
The reason I felt all of this was important to write was because I think as health coaches, we get it in our heads that we have to be perfect, but there is no such thing as perfect, there is simply being perfectly you, whatever that is.
Do I really think I'm a bad health coach? Of course not, I think I'm a pretty darn good one, mostly because I know first hand what it feels like to be healthy and still want to do something else simply for the vanity of it, because I'm human, and I understand what motivates us to do what we do.
So next time you're considering making a decision to improve your health, make sure you take an objective look at what your motivations are behind it, and decide if the consequences of achieving it are worth it, because they may not be.
And if the idea of being a health has ever appealed to you but you were afraid of taking the plunge because you think you need to be in 'perfect' health and have the 'perfect' body before you do, then stop thinking that and just start doing it already! No one is perfect, even us health coaches, but what we do have is a desire to be healthy and to help others be healthy too, and that's all that matters.
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