Trigger warning: details of disordered eating and compulsive exercising
I’m sat in Nando’s staring at a sachet of mayonnaise, trying desperately not to cry. My chest feels tight. My throat burns from holding back tears. Around me, people are ordering meals and filling drinks cups like this is the most normal thing in the world, while I’m mentally calculating whether 20g of mayonnaise is worth ruining my calorie deficit for.
Should I have it? Maybe I should weigh myself first? If I have it, am I a failure?
At the time, thoughts like that had become part of my everyday life. I was on a quest to reach my lowest weight, and everything had to be tracked and planned to maintain my calorie deficit. Milk in my tea and coffee? Weighed out and logged. Meals out? I’d bring my own. Sauces weren’t off limits, but only if they fit within my macros.
The scary part is that I genuinely thought I was being healthy. What started as a fairly innocent goal of losing weight became something much more obsessive. The leaner I got, the more validation I felt. Looking back at my camera roll now, it’s full of gym changing-room pictures where I look extremely lean – at the time, I saw those images as proof that everything I was doing was working.
On the outside, I had what I considered my ‘dream body’. On the inside, though, I was exhausted, anxious around food, and measuring my success by the number on the scales. Calorie counting had become so ingrained that crying over Nando’s mayo didn’t seem dramatic.
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Deep down, though, I knew something had to change. I couldn’t keep living like that.
How calorie counting slowly took over my life
Food itself wasn’t the problem. It was the fixation on the numbers, giving me a sense of control when everything was logged in MyFitnessPal, and anxiety when numbers weren’t available.
Lauren Charlton, a registered dietitian specialising in sports nutrition, endurance performance and RED-S recovery, explains that calorie counting can be a useful tool in some contexts.
‘It can help build awareness of intake, improve understanding of fuelling needs, or support structured performance goals,’ she says. ‘The issue comes when tracking stops feeling informative and starts feeling controlling.
‘Often the signs are rigidity around meals, anxiety when numbers are unavailable, guilt after eating more than planned, compensatory exercise, social withdrawal around food situations, or feeling unable to trust hunger and fullness cues without an app or device,’ she adds.
Displaying many of those signs, I structured my day around training and food. If I was going out for dinner, I’d restrict food throughout the day and scan the menu ahead of time for the lowest-calorie option (if I wasn’t taking my own). I’d make sure to add in a sweaty workout, too, to burn extra calories. Training hard in the gym is what I love, but the lower calories became, the harder it was to train the way I wanted. Sessions started to feel more like a chore than to be enjoyed, and by the end of the day, I often felt completely drained.
Charlton explains that under-fuelling can have a big impact on physical performance. ‘You may notice persistent fatigue, poor recovery, reduced training quality, recurrent injuries, disrupted hormones, poor sleep, increased illness frequency, digestive issues, or feeling cold all the time,’ she says.
‘In endurance athletes especially, chronic low energy availability can gradually make training feel harder rather than improving fitness.’
At the time, the idea of fuelling training felt almost counterintuitive. I believed that eating less and training harder would make me leaner.
Why I finally decided to stop tracking everything
In 2025, I ran a 50km ultra marathon, so fuelling properly was essential if I wanted to complete the distance. I understood that. I was still tracking my calories, even my intra-run fuel, but my calories had gone up from the 1,300 I’d once eaten while trying to reach my lowest weight to around 1,800 a day.
A note on calorie needs: The NHS states that the average woman needs around 2,000 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight, though individual energy needs vary significantly depending on factors like age, activity levels, body composition, hormones and training load. For athletes and highly active people, energy requirements are often substantially higher. Persistently under-fuelling can negatively affect physical performance, recovery, hormone health, mood and overall wellbeing.
Feeling much ‘softer’ than I had the year before, I found myself wanting to get back down to a lower weight after completing my ultra. A calorie deficit it was. But this time, I couldn’t stick with it, and when the number on the scale didn’t go down fast enough, I’d become demotivated. Every Monday, I’d have to start over. Every restart felt like a failure.
Why couldn’t I do it when I’d done it before? I felt like I had no control around food, constantly overeating the macros I had set for myself, and again, no energy to train hard.
Fed up with the vicious cycle I was in, I decided I wanted to move away from tracking calories, macros, and my weight. It would be my New Year’s resolution for 2026. However, it wasn’t as easy as just stopping overnight. After a prolonged period of being consumed by calories and body weight, thoughts and questions would creep into my head. What if I can’t stop eating, or what if I gain loads of weight? I knew I had to break that chain of thinking. The alternative was a lifetime of being controlled by numbers.
The unexpected impact on my body, performance and energy
I have to admit, I hoped I’d be like one of those women you see on social media – the ones who start eating more and suddenly reveal shredded six-pack abs. But that wasn’t the case. I’ve gained around 6kg since moving away from strict tracking. I still have definition, but I am softer around the edges, with bigger glutes and stronger-looking arms.
Seeing my body change was, at first, difficult to adjust to – smaller and leaner was always the goal. I’d catch my reflection in the gym mirror and find myself thinking about going back to calorie counting. Even trying on bikinis was something I avoided until recently. It hasn't been a simple journey, but I’ve started to feel more confident in my body.
Often, a slightly higher bodyweight reflects better hydration, glycogen storage, muscle restoration, hormonal recovery, and overall health, Charlton explains. What has outweighed the changes in my appearance, though, is how different I feel physically and mentally. Not only have I seen consistent progress in my performance, from 5km PBs to deadlifting 120kg and squatting 110kg, but I’ve also noticed huge improvements in other areas of my life too.
‘When someone begins fuelling properly again after a prolonged period of restriction, one of the first things they often notice is improved energy availability,’ Charlton says.
‘Training can feel more sustainable, recovery tends to improve, sleep often gets better, and many people notice improved mood, concentration, libido, and resilience to stress.’
No longer crying over Nando’s mayo, I’ve found my emotions feel far more stable. I’m better able to handle life more calmly and enjoy social aspects without my brain going into a spiral about the food associated.
For the first time, it feels like my body and mind have spare capacity again, whether that’s for training, work, family, or friends.
What I’ve learned about control, food and mental health
For as long as I can remember, being in a smaller body felt like the goal. And eventually, I reached it. When I was at my lowest adult weight, people constantly complimented me on my lean physique. But it wasn’t healthy. What they didn’t see, though, was how drained I felt inside – the tears, the exhaustion, and the extent to which calories and the scales controlled my life.
Now, the cues that once pushed me to keep restricting, like hunger or seeing the number on the scales go down, are the very things that signal to me that my body needs more support, not less.
‘One of the biggest things I see with athletes is that they are far more likely to be under-fuelling than over-fuelling. If in doubt, eat more. In the long term, it’s almost always better for both health and performance to slightly overfuel than to chronically underfuel,’ Charlton says.
I still have moments where I compare myself to old photos or wonder whether I looked ‘better’ before. But I’m starting to realise that health isn’t defined by how I look, it’s reflected in what my body is capable of. Running ultras, training for HYROX and triathlons, getting stronger in the gym, recovering well, and having energy for life outside training – those things now matter more to me than chasing the lowest number on the scales ever did.
Stopping calorie counting hasn’t magically fixed my relationship with food or my body image overnight. But as I’ve learned to rewire my thinking, this new mindset has given me something I didn’t have before… freedom.
If you need help with your or someone else's eating disorder
- Get in touch with your GP and explain what's going on, so you can be referred for specialist help
- Contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk
- Get in touch with eating disorder support service Seed on 01482 718130 or seedeatingdisorders.org.uk
- To seek private treatment, reach out to Orri on 0203 918 6340 or fill out a form here
