Odin, Ekoplaza, Marqt

You walk into an organic supermarket and look for the healthiest food. You don't want to be busy with diets and starving anymore. You are now going for healthy, much better. And an advantage is that if you eat healthy you also have fewer binge eating and therefore you can't get fat either, win, win. From now on you want to take good care of your body so that you can deliver top performance. If you starve yourself, you won't succeed. The helm changes, you walk happily on looking for the most healthy food, thinking that you have finally found the solution.

Vegan

You've also decided to 'go' Vegan. Many dancers at school do this and they also lose weight, and actually that is still what you want most. You've noticed lately that this way of life also takes up a lot of time and energy and that you don't think about much else than….. Yes, food. If you're honest, it's just another huge obsession. This was not the intention at all.

Obsession

You thought you made the right choice, but now all the attention goes back to eating. You dread social events because you are served food that you are not allowed according to your new lifestyle. You also notice that, just like before, your compensatory behavior returns. If the strict dietary rules are not met, the following days must be devoted to extra healthy, unprocessed food and extra exercise in addition to school. You want to be the healthiest dancer in school at all costs, so put your shoulders to the wheel and just keep going.

Orthorexia

Lately I see more and more dancers who suffer from something called orthorexia. It's all about the 'healthy' feeling and being 'clean', but also very extreme. It is not so much about how much food and weight, but about the quality of the food: it must be as healthy as possible. I see that these extreme rules lead to a very one-sided eating pattern. Dancers are deficient in important nutrients, which in turn leads to injuries. I also see that this way of working with food causes problems in the head. Perfectionism rears its head again: “what can I eat, what can't, what is good, what is bad, what times should I eat” and so on. I see that, despite the fact that there is no starvation, this behavior also causes anxiety and stress and that is really not nice.

You are unique

Every time you find a method/diet/way of living where you think; this makes me thin, this makes me healthy, this makes me a top dancer then these are often methods that tell you what to do. And not just you but actually everyone and that doesn't work. Tell a perfectionist dancer what to do and they go for it with obsessive behavior as a result.

How I work is to work with you to create a plan that is specific to you and created by you, with your circumstances and priorities at the top of the list. A way of life that suits you is easy to maintain. You don't actually have to think about it anymore, it's in your system, how wonderful does that sound? I live like this and can tell you that it saves so much negative energy that you can put into your development as a dancer.

Albert-Heijn, Jumbo, Lidl

You walk into the supermarket. Tonight you have dinner with friends, super fun. Everyone does a course and you take care of the dessert, delicious. You found a recipe and grab everything you need without even looking at the back of the package to see what's in the products. You walk out of the supermarket with a smile, it will be a really nice evening. Curious what the others came up with. Delicious together in the kitchen with a snack and a drink, period.

If you are honest with yourself, do you recognize the behavior above? Even though you stopped dieting, are you still eating 24/7 but you call it a 'healthy lifestyle'?

Do you think of food in 'good' or 'bad', Let me know, I can help you..