Define 'Diet'

I was reading a blog entry by Meg Selig in her blog on Psychology Today and was caught by her comment that the word "diet", in and of itself, is confusing. It can, she points out, simply refer to customary food and drink. And she is right, simply by eating and drinking you are on a "diet", you are eating and drinking the things that make up your customary food and drink intake.

With so many different subtle interpretations of what the word means, saying that you are "on a diet" is a little like saying that you are in clothing. There are hundreds of thousands, or more, different possibilities for what you might be wearing, and just the same, there are hundreds of thousands of things that you might be consuming if you are on a diet.

And "diet" has come to mean a rather harshly strict manner of consuming food and drink that, let's face it, is a lot of hard work and stress and quite often ends in failure. I don't know how many people make a new year's resolution to loose weight by going on a diet and exercising more, but I think it is likely only slightly more than the number of people that have broken that resolution by the third week of the year.

We need to restructure our definition of the word "diet" and stop using it in ways such as "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet".

There does not have to be a loss of enjoyment when someone seeks to lose weight, and restructuring what you eat to lose weight is a bad plan, because people tend to drop back into old habits and at some point after the weight has been lost, the pizza or glazed raised donuts are going to call and the weight will return with them.

The goal is not to restructure your diet to exclude things you love, it is to restructure your eating so that you are able to better enjoy the things that you love - and that way you can eat less of them and still lose weight.

We have all heard the advice to never snack while watching television, right? It is actually not a really bad thing, but the trick is to replace that bag full of potato chips with a cup full of celery stalks. Or a sliced up apple (and no, packaged baked apple chips do not count).

Save the chips to have a few the next time you are enjoying a hamburger grilled on the back porch or at a local park. Make the chips a treat that are enjoyed when you are out doing something active, not munchies to forget how much you are eating while you watch a movie.

Rather than pick up a book on the newest fad in dieting, pick up a book on healthy meal preparation and how foods work with your body. Then redefine your idea of what it means to be on a diet, and focus not on depriving your body of food, but on assuring it gets the right kinds of food to make it healthier and you feeling better. And you might, as I did, discover that you really do not even like the taste of chocolate cake or chips anymore. There are, surprisingly, much tastier, and healthier, foods to enjoy.