I really love getting into all the different subcommunities of TikTok. I’ve been on BookTok, CleanTok, MakeupTok, and more recently I landed on the side of TikTok where Pagan Folk bands thrive – bet you didn’t see that one coming!
Some of the videos on CleanTok are of people deep cleaning homes that have been through some shit. It’s mainly kitchens that look like they haven’t been cleaned in… well, ever. There are layers and layers and layers of dirt, grime, old food, etc. that house all sorts of insects and rodents. Hours and even days of cleaning are compiled into a 2-3 minute video.
At the beginning of the video, you’re not sure how it’s going to ever get clean. Halfway through you’re like, “sheesh, did we even make any progress here? It feels like we haven’t.” Then finally you reach the finish line. Granted, this all happens pretty fast because almost always the videos are sped up to 2-3x the regular speed to fit all the details into just a couple of minutes.
So what do deep cleaning TikTok videos have to do with nutrition? Because improving your relationship with food and learning how to eat normally is basically like cleaning up years and years worth of dirt and junky nutrition info that’s built up in your brain over time. Stuff you’ve never bothered to clean up; a floor you just kept piling on!
You might feel like there is no way you can make progress after the years of this junk nutrition “information” that has now formed all of those dirty layers. You feel like a lost cause, like there is just too much to work through. Overwhelmed? I’d say so.
You might start to clean it up, then after a while feel like you aren’t making enough progress because you can’t yet see the floor after all the time you’ve spent. So you give up. You could have been right there but you wouldn’t have known.
But then one day, you decide you’re going to go for it again but this time you’re not stopping until you see the floor. Once you see the floor, you’re going to keep going until you can see more of the floor, then even more after that. You won’t stop until you can see the entire floor and it’s sparkling. You get up off your hands and knees and turn back to look at me because I’ve been guiding you through the process of cleaning the floor step by step.
We high five and walk out of the kitchen, with your newfound confidence in your ability to maintain the cleanliness of the kitchen with all the new knowledge you’ve taken in and a renewed joy of eating.