Why Diet is a Four Letter Word
After many years of starting a diet, then failing at the same diet that I thought promised would change my life, I have learned that diet is a four letter word.
The four letter word is avoided at all costs during conversations. I avoid articles, books, YouTube videos, if the word diet is present. I avoid it all.
We all have read and heard, to make real change in your health is a lifestyle change. Can someone please explain what that actually means. For years that whole concept escaped me and not until the two decades of birthdays anniversaries did it become more clear.
Yet, any eating plan is always called a diet. The same 4 letters that when spoken aloud to a friend or family member the response always is ”oh”. Or worse “not again, I hate it when you are on a diet”.
The word itself is not allowing you to set the correct mindset. The mindset needed to actually make a lifestyle change that is needed to manage our health using nutrition.
Diet implies a beginning and an end goal. Which contradicts the concept of a lifestyle change.
Diet has the negative connotations that you are depriving yourself of food, and that being hungry feeling is the sacrifice that needs to be made in order to obtain a waist line.
The issue to be had with that sacrifice, human nature is not always in that mindset. Life is a beautiful and an amazing experience but if you have a constant sacrifice in your life, it prevents you from achieving the most important goal you have, to be healthy.
Diet is often associated with eating foods you don’t enjoy but need to have because the sociality pressure “it is good for you”.
Diet also opens yourself up to unsolicited advice from others. “You just need to go to the gym more”, “don’t drink your calories”, “eat more chicken breasts” and the list goes on and on.
Understanding the person is trying to help you; it also puts negative thoughts into your mindset. The facts are, every human has to eat to be able to survive. Not every human body is the same and food interacts differently in each of us.
Last year, I implemented the term eating plan rather than diet into my life.
Being a more generic term and wasn’t definitive enough for the person to comprehend with a generic canned response of ‘oh’.
The first thing I noticed is that people stopped giving me advice and presented with questions.
I also stopped using the term keto, carnivore, whole 30 which are well known and come with their own stigmas.
Yes, even with a visit to my doctor I use the generic term of “Low to no-carb” eating plan. Clearly the lab work doesn’t make her question my personal choice of an eating plan that I finally got to work.
When I get the blank stare response I add additional information, it is an elimination diet style, to help me learn which foods my body is sensitive too.
A majority of people understand the concept of food allergies, however, food sensitivities impact our overall health more than people realize.
People around you become more empathic to this term and understand the purpose of your new eating plan. Dare I even mention, some become personal coaches and encourage you to succeed beyond the waistline.
If I never took the risk of being extreme in my eating plan, I would have never discovered the ingredients in food that my body responds with inflammation.
If I only focused on the diet plan of the month, I would have never learned what my body really needs to feel optimal.
Challenge yourself to stop using the word diet and begin to say eating plan and see how others around you respond.
