The dreaded D word. We all hate it, yes you all know it.
It’s ‘Diet’ One of my most hated words. It has no place in my vocabulary.
Why do I hate it so much? Because it’s used so often to
refer to a negative intake of food. We hear so many people moan ‘I’m on a a
diet, I can only eat salads and fruit now!’ or ‘Sorry I can’t have any of X, Y
or Z food because I’m on a diet’ It’s so often used by so many people to
describe an unhealthily reduced calorie intake to the bare minimum of
stereotypical ‘healthy’ food like fruit and vegetables. This in reality is
actually very unhealthy.
We see it all over magazines; informing us of the new
’celebrity diet’ that promises us if we follow their meal plan we’ll get a
perfect body just like theirs. We see companies advertising their new diets that
are also claiming to give us perfect bodies if we follow their juice/cabbage
soup/5:2/no carb etc diet. When honestly they’re just trying to earn money by
falsely selling you any old diet that we hope will give us a body like the
advertisement model, when in reality it never does. It sucks people in and
makes us believe the only way to have a perfect figure is to unhealthily reduce
our calories and eat minimum amounts of food sources.
Diets are also always used in reference to a certain way of
eating for a certain amount of time. This is why no one ever succeeds on a
diet, they are never healthily sustainable for a long time. Yes these
‘diets’ may make you lose weight initially, but this will just be water weight.
You won’t be losing fat weight. When you then come off the diet and begin to
eat normally again you will pile the weight you lost back on and more. This is
due to the unhealthily reduced calorie intake slowing down your bodies
metabolism, it learns to function on the low amount of foods so when you begin
to eat a normal amount again you will easily put weight back on. After a diet
has ended we also tend to go on a bit of a mad, freedom binge; eating all the
foods we have restricted ourselves from and ending up consuming more calories
than we normally would have done.
Headlines like ‘I cut out carbs and diary and never felt
better’ and ‘ I live off juices and I have so much energy now’ are all, to put
it bluntly, a pile of shit. No one benefits from cutting out all food groups and solid food
like that. Too have a proper healthy food intake we need to eat ALL
sources - carbs, fats and protein. We need to eat both healthy and UNhealthy
foods to have a truly balanced diet.
Cutting out certain foods will just make our mind and body
crave them more. For me I was never a sweet person, but as soon as I said no
more chocolate literally all I could think about was everything and anything
smothered in chocolate. That’s why having a little bit of everything you want
is actually the healthiest way. Everything in moderation. Want some home made
cookies, have one. Just not the whole batch. Want some pizza, have one. Just
not every night. Eat your vegetables and eat your cake. Eat the rainbow, food
from every colour.
That’s why instead of the word ‘Diet’, use ‘Lifestyle’. You
want to truly make your body and mind healthier? Then chose a lifestyle that
fits you best, doesn’t feel like a chore and you can keep up for the rest of
your life. No point following some celebrities diet plan that includes meat if
you’re a vegetarian, includes broccoli when you don’t like broccoli, includes
reducing your calorie intake to ridiculous amounts when your body actually
needs twice that amount. They aren’t sustainable and will lead to failure.
Chose a balance of healthy foods you enjoy eating, learn new recipes to spice
dishes up, eat all your favourite foods (healthy and unhealthy) and make sure
you eat enough of them to properly fuel your body. This way you won’t feel like
food is a chore, you’ll actually enjoy eating, not feel hungry all the time or
fatigued/low energy from lack of calories.
Say no to diets, say yes to a healthier balanced lifestyle
