Society Is A Real WhatChaMaCallIt!

Today I found myself at a job fair. I’m on a major hunt for a steady teaching job right now. At this job fair, I wandered around and spoke to some schools but that’s not the point I’m getting to. I visited this one particular table where they had a fun-size candy bucket. Once I left the building, I sort of aquatinted myself with being “that kid” at Halloween. We all know the “one” I mean; the “one” who takes one than one single piece of your fun-size candy in the bucket. That was mean today…I took like 3..maybe 4. That’s what they are for, right?

As I was leaving the building to go run some other errands, I got to thinking about something that I didn’t realized bugged me until today. You know all those articles that pop up around Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter about ‘how long you have to run to work off holiday treats’ or ‘what 100 calories really looks like in your candy’? I decided that they really infuriate me!!! It makes me mad in my deep, down core for multiple reasons. Here we go, deep breath.

Oh! Do you get the title now? A real WhatChaMaCallIt??? You just gotta Rolo with my Mounds of Gummie jokes here.

Article examples:

These Photos of 100 Calories of Valentine’s Day Candy Will Probably Break Your Heart– by Jenny Sugar via PopSugar

How Long It Takes to Burn Off Your Favorite Fun-Size Treat– by Leta Shy via PopSugar

How Much Exercise It Takes To Burn Off Your Favorite Valentine’s Sweets– by Kaylin Pound via Elite Daily

First of all: IT’S A DANG HOLIDAY!!!!!!!

Aren’t these the days that we aren’t supposed to be worrying about calories or what we are eating. Aren’t we supposed to be enjoying these holidays? Are we not allowed to divulge a little bit?! It’s Christmas/Halloween/insert your favorite holiday here for crying out loud! Heck, even if it’s not a holiday, maybe you just had a really crumby Thursday and wanted to eat your fun-size Snickers. I don’t think you should be judged.

Second of all: WHY are we so hyper-focused on ‘burning off’ our food?

Personally, because I’m still in the process of recovering from an eating disorder I do sometimes think about how I’m going to get rid of whatever I just ate later. However, I don’t think normal people are doing that. That’s not normal or intuitive eating. That’s disorder eating!!! These articles are having people think disordered thoughts! This is how eating disorders begin, y’all! When you begin to think ‘oh, how many miles am I going to have to run later?’ or ‘how many minutes of spin class/yoga do I need to do?’ if I eat *this specific piece of candy/chocolate* that’s when you are no longer enjoying what is supposed to be a treat. That’s when you begin to not want to eat anything be vegetables and water. We shouldn’t constantly have to feel like we need to have “food guilt” when we eat a fun-size snack! It’s highly dangerous in my opinion and these articles are just thrown around on just about every holiday I can think of.

Third of all: Why does society feel the need to constantly tell us to ‘be fit’ or workout?

I see it everywhere. Magazines, Facebook, random ads that pop up, news sites, radio, there are more places I know but those are all I can dish out right now. I see these headlines of ‘shrink 3 sizes in 2 weeks’, ‘look hot from behind’ and ‘look great naked’ among countless others. This one almost takes the cake for me: ‘how I got my body back’ wait, was it lost!? Good gosh, can’t we just be happy how we are?! These articles and magazines go around preaching ‘self-love’ but it really seems like are leaning towards promoting self-hate. Why do we need any articles about this at the grocery store? Where’s the article about how to like yourself more? I NEED that one!

I can’t really say it any better than how this Instagram user I follow said it. Her account is Nourish And Eat and her name is Gina and she promotes loving yourself and eating disorder recovery. She’s pretty inspirational.

Finally: If we analyze everything we put in our mouth…..are we really living and enjoying life?

That’s the whole point of eating disorder recovery. It’s about feeling all your emotions and enjoying life and everything in it. I don’t know about you, but this girl needs her chocolate and I’d like to be able to savor it and not worry about what I just consumed and how I’m going to rid myself of it later. Life is meant to be enjoyed not merely in fun-size, but all the time. I think we just need to focus less on the ‘what’s in my holiday candy’ and enjoy eating the holiday candy we love! Because let’s be honest, it’s so so so very good and one perk of being an adult is getting to take more than one piece out of the Halloween candy bucket that night 😉

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