Reducing the calories does not inherently increase the healthiness of your food.
Reducing the fat content does not inherently increase the healthiness of your food.
Reducing the sugars does not inherently increase the healthiness of your food.
The only way to increase the healthiness of your food is by adding additional nutrients to it.
I saw a video of someone complaining that fucking chicken tikka masala "wasn't healthy" so they made a "healthier version" that was, in fact, LESS HEALTHY. Because they made it with only fat free dairy products, rendering many of the vitamins they would have otherwise gotten from that meal utterly useless, because the body needs fats in order to absorb them properly.
Two tbsp of brown sugar does not render a meal "unhealthy." Full fat dairy products do not render a meal "unhealthy." Calorically dense foods do not render a meal "unhealthy."
If you're really concerned about your health, add more nutrients. Eat extra veggies or extra protein. But you're not actually worried about your health. You're worried about your weight.
You're worried that in the process of eating a homemade meal with lean protein and veggies and a rich, delicious sauce you will consume more energy than you can use today.
You're worried that energy might be stored so that your body can use it when it needs to later.
You're worried that your relationship with gravity might change. You've been taught to worry about that. You've been taught to misconstrue manufacturered body issues as being "health conscious." But you're not doing things to promote health. You're just trying to reduce your energy consumption no matter what.
And I am begging you to consider, that this is not actually a "health conscious" mindset at all.
May I add something I learned about human evolution that helped me a LOT with my ED and body dysmorphia?
You are fighting your very species. You are fighting one of the things your body evolved to do and to do WELL:
Carry fat.
You evolved to gain and carry fat. Humans evolved specifically to store fat, lots of it, very well, for long periods. We are one of a very few species to do this!
Fat is an INCREDIBLE resource for our body! It's what our thoughts run on. It's what we use up when we're too sick to eat.
We evolved in a place that has seasonal drought. Fattening up during the wet season helped us survive through the dry season to the next wet season. And that mechanism helped us adapt to many other types of environment, too, from places with lots of snow to deserts. We could take long journeys. We could survive illness. We could survive injury. Because we had this lunchbox under our skin!
We have an incredible digestive system. I'm sure you've read how we can digest all manner of poisons: chillies, coffee, chocolate, mint, alliums, alcohol, all kinds of stuff that is specifically trying to HURT US because it does not want to be eaten! And we can eat all that! Our stomachs aren't even all that acidic, we just have a big team of bacteria that evolved WITH us to help! We've got this enormous liver that can handle just SO much, and regenerates! All to help us eat more kinds of food!
And then on top of that, we can make fat just, just SO well. We've got a pantry that is never bare, always shopping for more to put away for later that does not impede our bodies the way fat does for other animals! We store it out of the way and--being bipeds--we can carry lots of it before it starts to really slow us down. We're talking hundreds of pounds before that happens, that's THOUSANDS of calories! That's a biiiiiiig lunchbox!
(calories are largely bullshit as a form of measuring this, but they're a useful shorthand most people understand)
You are a human. You evolved to carry fat WELL. When you starve yourself of nutrients, your body has millions of years of survival telling it that you are currently suffering a drought, and it should store as much fat as it can so you never feel starved again. That's what you're fighting when you try and shed fat. You are fighting your SPECIES.
We are like polar bears and seals and whales. It is very sad and upsetting to see a polar bear with no fat on it. It should be just as upsetting to look at a fatless human. Fat is the default for our species, period. Because fat = nutrients stored away for later. You can get mad at me about it but it doesn't change that is a fact. That's how we evolved to be.
(And I don't care to be "nice" to the thinocracy and play "nice" with them--they get ENOUGH praise.)
Fat is the default for our species. We're bears, we're seals, we're supposed to be fat as much as we're supposed to be able to break a leg, heal it, and walk on it again inside three months, or eat poison, or make friends with anything. Putting fat by is part of being a human being.
