Overthinking "Food"!

If you follow me on Instagram (if you're not, than you're missing out on all the food posts!, just saying), you might have read my little ramble in one of my latest posts. I joined the "fitness" industry in the beginning of this year and it has been a crazy year for me. I've been everywhere, from eating what I wanted, to under-eating, to eating too much fat, not enough carbs,... you name it! In other words, I have really overthought food. Wanna read some more?







When I started working out, I literally had no idea about nutrition. And by that, I mean like 0.0 idea. Because of that, I started following "fitness people" on Youtube who had a lot of followers and seemed to know everything about it. I'm not going to name any people here, because they've done nothing wrong, their approach just didn't work for me at all.

Basically, I started weighing out every single ingredient that went into my food to the gram. I entered everything into My Fitness Pal, and I was basically only happy when I hit very low macro's and calories. But... that's just not a healthy way of living. I was under-eating like crazy! My relationship with food, my one and only love, became very messed up and I started seeing food as something I needed to have to fuel my body and not as something I have to enjoy. I would eat the most plain and tasteless plates of food you can imagine, just because I had to hit that certain number in the My Fitness Pal app.

I lost about 5 kg by doing that, and to be honest, I became far too skinny and low body fat for my height. I'm 1m 80 cm and I weighed around 60 kg at that point (! I didn't have a lot of muscle mass at that point either). I didn't even look healthy anymore and that really hit me when I had to take new pictures for my passport that had to be renewed and my mom literally said to me "You look like a ghost in that picture.", and she was right. I looked so unhealthy, my face had 0% expression and I looked like I just hated life.

When I realized that, I began to eat everything I wanted again, and as you can imagine, my body didn't agree with that. My belly became bloated very easily and I just couldn't figure out what to do.

Bodybuilding and the nutrition that comes with that are things you have to experience yourself and you have to get to know your body. I now know that a higher carb, lower fat and a tad lower protein works best for me. I can easily bump up my carbs and look the same or even a bit muscular (because the carbs fill up my muscles), but if I up my fats, my body just doesn't seem to like it.

What I want to say with this is: don't overthink "food".


  • Food isn't going to ruin your body.
  • Food isn't going to ruin your progress.
  • Food is something that should fuel your body, but it should also be something you enjoy and find tasty.
  • Food is just food. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Living a healthy, balanced lifestyle is soooo important, and it is even more important for your mental health than for your physical health. I now eat mostly wholesome products, but I do enjoy a glass of red wine now and again, or a lovely cookie, or some vegan hot chocolate. You still have to live life guys!




I hope this post makes a little sense, but this is just what my mind tells me to say, so... here it is!

How do you approach the way you eat?

Fientje VH

Fientje is a healthy food blogger who loves a good chocolate dessert and some oats. On this blog, you can find some new recipes, so you can fill your bellies!

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