I don’t have an eating disorder, my bad eating habits haven’t ever reached that level, but I have balanced dangerously on that line.

In our current culture it’s almost normal to have disordered eating habits. Our diet culture and super processed food has made it a hard thing to avoid, especially as a young woman. Hell, when I was on Tumblr in high school there were thousand of thinspo accounts, now they just mask themselves on instagram as health accounts that focus far to much on the goal body shape than the health.

Our dieting world has shifted so much that we coined a new eating disorder based on super restrictive diets that are in the fad now. If I hear one more world about keto or the whole 30 I might scream.

But that’s not because I’m above bad eating habits, I’ve been known to binge eat. In college I was on a weight loss diet that had me eating below the calorie intake I needed. I’ve devolved these habits slowly overtime, letting them become normal and common place. It’s just been the past month that I’ve been really trying to address them.

What happened? I had a baby and though I was unhappy with my post partum body I knew I couldn’t go to the opposite extreme that I just came out of (I was binge eating regularly during my pregnancy). I knew I needed a change. That I needed to enjoy food but also balance it. That I needed to eat healthy without fixating on it too much. I needed to be able to eat some chips and not the whole bag. I needed to make sure I was still getting the calories I needed to do what needed to be done. And yes, I needed my body to reach its healthy weight.

I’m not on a diet really. I’m just striving for balance, to not let food control me.

I’ll follow this post up in a few weeks about what has been working and what hasn’t been, but I wanted to make this post so you could look deeper at your own habits and see if you too have some disordered eating that needs to be addressed.