Eating in your 20s is often a wildly different experience than the way you ate in your teens. Not only can you not eat all the same unhealthy crap that you used without gaining weight and/or feeling awful, you might even find yourself not wanting to eat that same unhealthy crap. Shocking! Here are 15 other food-related truths you will probably discover during this transition period from the naïve, saturated-fat-filled innocence of childhood to the wiser, healthier, yet somehow lazier years of your 20s.
1. Packaged food makes you feel awful.
Maybe it didn’t used to make you feel great, but it didn’t used to make you feel like you’re going to die, either. Now that you’re in your 20s, it’ll hit you with a vengeance and make you feel like you’re literally going to die as soon as your body starts absorbing all the grease, salt and chemicals.
2. Fast food also makes you feel awful.
If you want to feel like a greasy, leaden ball of cheese is slowly expanding inside your stomach and creeping through your arteries, you know you can always turn to fast food. Its effects will last for at least two days.
3. You’re going to eat fast food sometimes anyway.
Because sometimes there won’t be time or money for anything else.
4. You’ll probably give up on salad.
Unless you have a deep, personal love for salad, you’ll eventually realize that it kind of sucks and there are so many other delicious yet healthy foods you’d rather be eating.
5. You won’t always follow rigid rules.
After spending your teen years not paying attention to or caring what you ate and your early 20s paying too much attention to what you ate and being obsessive about eating a healthy post-college diet, you’ll start to cut yourself a little more slack and realize it’s not the end of the world if you sometimes eat junk food.
6. But you’ll probably eat more healthfully than you did 10 years ago.
Now you actually know what you should and shouldn’t be eating and how to make the things you should be eating taste delicious. The journey of discovery is pretty much over at this point; you know what your routine is and it works for you.
7. It’s too easy to rely on coffee.
Once you’re no longer attending classes on a sporadic schedule and are instead working all day, every day, coffee becomes something that you are either addicted to or have to avoid so you don’t use it as a crutch. There is no middle ground.
8. You can’t exercise without eating carbs first.
On days that you eat carbs before working out, you feel great. You have boundless energy and usually don’t feel like you might die.
9. And if you do, you feel crappy.
The days that you don’t eat carbs before working out, you feel like you will die. The effects are extremely noticeable.
10. You’ll also start paying more attention to what you eat after working out.
You can’t help yourself. The relationship between what you eat and how you feel is fascinating, and way more noticeable now that you’re older.
11. And some of the things you used to eat after exercising will make you shudder in horror.
Mmm, nothing like a big tub of artificially sweetened protein powder made from chemicals and sawdust.
12. Free food is really exciting.
You have to hide how psyched you are when you discover free food.
13. People who buy you food for Christmas and birthdays are the best.
Expensive food items that you would never buy for yourself are now some of the most exciting gifts that you receive.
14. You might spend more time planning meals than you actually spend thinking about work.
What’s more important: the report that you have to finish in an hour or your raging internal debate over what to do with last night’s leftovers? You already know the answer to that.
15. Few things in life really matter; food is one of them.
Now that you’re reached full adulthood, you understand that your needs are simple. Food is one of those needs. Food will always be there for you.
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