by Ethan Holmes

Created on: March 05, 2009

Lose the Word Diet', Then Lose the Weight

As a fitness and health professional I heard it a thousand times; "I'm going on a diet. I have to lose some weight." The ultimate goal, to return to a healthier weight and feel better about one's self is admirable. The only problem with the method is the word diet'.

When you hear the word diet it does not usually hold to its true and original definition. When the doctor used to question you about your daily diet he meant exactly that; what did you eat on a regular daily basis? Today it carries a totally different connotation. Today it means a temporary method of food intake restriction designed to specifically reduce body weight.

Using the two vastly different definitions of the word it is not difficult to see how the second definition is a temporary action. An overweight person wants to lose the undesirable pounds so they go on a diet. This diet is designed to help them lose the weight by restricting and/or changing their current eating habits. This would necessarily be a permanent change yet most use it as a temporary adjustment. That is precisely where the term yo-yo dieting' comes from.

Many people have spent their entire lives and quite a large amount of their hard-earned money bouncing up and down in body weight. Among them is a well known television talk show host who has actually endorsed multiple diets, dieting books and weight loss cookbooks. She has, perhaps, been the most famous yo-yo dieter of them all. My humble opinion is that she merely proves the point of this article; lose the word diet, then lose the weight.

Losing weight and keeping it off permanently requires a permanent lifestyle change. Lifestyle means what you eat, how much you consume and how you burn it. Overeating, poor choices in eating and a lack of productive, regular physical activity are all part of the equation that got you there in the first place so it stands to reason that changing only one or two of those on a temporary basis are not the answers. Yet that is precisely what dieting does.

Dieting by modern definition is temporary. No company that I am aware of sells you a lifelong plan of eating or offers you a lifetime supply of their meals and snacks or diet pills and supplements. Yet you would have to purchase a lifetime's supply of these if you truly intended to lose the weight and keep it off by their method. Who would wish to live that way for their rest of their life with someone else telling what to eat, how to eat, how much to eat?

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