How To Survive The Social Isolation Of A Super-Healthy Lifestyle
It’s never fun to deprive yourself of things you enjoy, and when you’re cutting out certain foods—whether it’s due to health reasons or to shed a few pounds—you’re pretty much gonna end up saying “no” to your favorite snacks and meals. But passing on that cupcake with the perfect frosting-to-cake ratio can also have unexpected mental collateral damage. I would know. Earlier this year, I was on a strict nutritional program: Beginning January 1, I said goodbye to sugar, carbs and even my beloved (and bloat-inducing) La Croix Pamplemousse. It took going on the biggest health kick of my life to realize that maintaining a strict food regimen is extremely isolating. Aside from working out, reading or watching TV, there wasn’t much I could participate in under my self-imposed constraints. Dinners were out. So were meetings for cocktails, perhaps the most social activity for adults in modern-day society. Eliminating all unhealthy foods and alcohol can mean spending the majority of your time alone—and there’s only so much Bravo and Netflix one can binge before unraveling like an Edgar Allan Poe character. After a week or so, I stopped missing chocolate chip cookies and started missing my friends. Look, I get it—in order to reach your goals, you must sacrifice. But I was sacrificing food and my social life. So how did I keep myself from becoming the focus of a future episode of Dateline? Here’s what I did to stay sane.
