Read it as you please, “You, on a diet!” or “You, on a diet?” or perhaps, “You, on a diet!?!?!”
Indeed, you are already “on a diet.” By definition everyone on the planet is “on a diet.” “Diet” is simply a reference to that which you eat.
If you use Twinkies as your hot dog buns: that is your diet.
If you eat tofurkey for Thanksgiving day: that is your diet.
If you have bacon wrapped lard fried butter sticks: that is your diet.
If you eat a balanced meal: that is your diet.
Seriously, recently a TV show featured the following recipe: mash Spam into a football shape inside of which is a cube of cheese, wrap it with three strips of bacon and deep fry the whole thing. Please! But yes, that is a diet (indeed, low carb, high fat people are writing this recipe).
When does terminology imitate life and when does life imitate terminology?
Many people seem to define “diet” as some strange and displeasingly restrictive regime into which you put yourself for a limited amount of time. This is why you hear people say, “I tried” this or that “diet” or, “I went on” this or that “diet” or, “I am on a diet.”
This generally means, I will change the way I eat for a little while, then go back to eating in the manner to which I am accustomed (and a sedentary lifestyle) and then I will complain that this or that “diet” does not work. After all, “I gained the weight back, and more!”
Fitness is a lifestyle, not a fantasy camp.
A diet is to be a realistic nutrition plan and not a tortured and temporary deviation from your usual routine of whatever and whenever.
Certainly, even people on good, solid and healthy diets will modify and change their diets. Some will “go on” a certain diet whilst preparing for a competition of some sort. Yet, their diet is part of their lifestyle and is designed to achieve a certain goal.
And that is the key: a goal. What is your diet goal?
It may be to instantly stop feeling hungry as soon as hunger rears its ugly head. Then you will eat any and everything; anytime, anywhere simply to stop the sensation of hunger. Tip: if you “eat when you are hungry,” do not eat because you are hungry but rather, have another long term goal in mind.
It may be to fuel your workout and recovery so as to keep your body from digesting your muscles and skeleton.
It may be to loose a few pounds for your high school reunion.
It may be to lower your cholesterol without taking medication.
The options are as various as individuals.
The fact is that fitness is a lifestyle and that is in regards to exercise, diet, being conscious of everyday body mechanics (such as ergonomics), etc.
You must concoct a goal, research your dietary options, develop a nutrition plan (a diet) and stick to it.
Remember one ongoing recommendation of this National Fitness Trends Examiner page: context, context, context. Picture this: you are researching a nutrition plan 1) you find one written by a professional bodybuilder whose context and goal is gaining mass for massive muscles and 2) you find one written by a long distance runner whose context and goal is to be as lean and light as possible.
Do you think that there will be a difference between their nutrition plans? Indeed. Can you picture a massive bodybuilder on the nutrition plan of a long distance runner or a long distance runner on the nutrition plan of a massive bodybuilder? Now you get the idea.
Thus, find your context, your goal and develop a nutrition plan (a diet) and stick to it. Yet, stick to it does not mean that when you are invited to Thanksgiving diner, for example, you take your scale and measuring cups with you so as to measure all of your portions. Combining a lifestyle of exercise and diet means that you can have your cake and eat it too.
You can have “off” or “cheat” days and know that you will simply get back on track the next day. When you “go off” your diet and “cheat” you can think of having blown it, feel bad and maybe even exaggerate, “There goes my week” or month or year. Or, you can just tell yourself the common sense truth that you live a lifestyle of exercise and diet and that an off/cheat day simply means that 1) you are human, 2) the fact that you live a fitness lifestyle means that you can enjoy any food at all whilst moderating and 3) remind yourself of your goals so as to get back on track.
Eating something that is “off” of your diet should not be an emotional or psychological issue. It should just mean that you can enjoy food, enjoy it within parameters, that you control the food and it does not control you and that you move on with your life maaaaaaaaan.
To weigh or not to weigh, that is the question:
Some say that weighing yourself often, much less daily, is a bad idea as it is an experience that, from day to day, can send you on an emotional roller coaster.
Yet, when you understand what weighing yourself really means you will not have to attach to it anything but a learning experience and motivation.
Pop quiz: what does a scale do?
Anyone?
Anyone?
It tells your weight—period.
It does not (repeat, does not!) tell you what sort of weight it is.
Is a six foot tall male who weighs 280 obese?
The scale does not know: 6' and 280 lbs is very obese for a sedentary person who eats wrongly.
However, ask Zack “King” Khan if 6' and 280 lbs because he is 6' and 280 lbs and is most certainly not obese (see for yourself).
You get on the scale and you have lost weight: jump for joy!
You get on the scale and you have gained weight: cry into your pillow!
But what sort of weight did you lose? If you lost muscle weight then you had better gain it back.
What sort of weight did you gain? If you gained muscle weight then what is the problem.
The scale is merely spitting out numbers, it is all ones and zeros. Your job is to interpret the data: the mirror and your belt may be your best guides.
A nutritionist with the cyber-pseudonym Fitnessman notes:
I have had a few clients bail on the ketogenic cutting diet, not because they weren't losing fat, but they were putting on weight.
They just couldn't understand that for the first time in their lives they were actually giving their bodies the proper nutrition it needed.
The muscles responded in kind and grew thus making them heavier.
The one fellow put on 10 pounds in six weeks and dropped two inches off his waist, but he was still convinced the diet was not working.
Loosing waist waste is a sure sign of losing fat but, but, but the scale showed a number that was 10 lbs more than pervious so that must be bad. Insanity.
Best practice:
Weigh yourself every day, note is by day on an Excel spreadsheet and then you can filter to see what your average weight is per day.
You see, particularly if your metabolism quit decades ago (and weekends are rest periods) then you will always weight more on Mondays and you will on Fridays, after working out all week.
Pretty soon you will be able to know how much you weigh without weighing yourself. Pretty soon you will be able to simply tell, from day to day, when to eat more of this and cut back on that.
In future segments we will consider various fitness lifestyle related dietary plans as well as the issue of whether restaurant nutrition facts should be on the menus and provide a list of best and worst restaurant foods.
What have you tried?
At which have you “failed”?
Do you beat yourself up over “dieting”?
What has worked, in the long run?
Also, consider these elucidating books:
Cut Thru the Crap of Exercise and Fat-Loss Nutrition
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for while bodily training is of some value,
godliness is of value in every way,
as it holds promise for the present
life and also for the life to come
—1 Timothy 4:8
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