It's interesting to trace the origins of the word "diet." It stems from the Greek word "diatsthai," meaning "to live one's life, and from the Latin word "diaeta," meaning "way of living." All of us are on a diet of one sort of another, even if that diet is candy and donuts-it's the way one chooses to live one's life. In contemporary times, the word "diet" has become associated with losing weight, or healthy eating, yet most of us aren't losing excess weight, and our eating habits are less than healthy. Is this really the way we chose to live our lives? Is it really our choice to feel uncomfortable in our own skin and add health risks to our day, or have we become so discouraged by the word "dieting" and repeated failures that we've just given up. I suspect it is the latter. And for good reason.

Highly restrictive diets that involve complicated meal plans, buckets of expensive pills, exhaustive exercise programs, and often pre-packaged foods, simply do not work. We try, but sooner or later these unnatural ways of eating and living are impossible to keep up with, and we fail. There is only so much failure we can put up with before we pop open the Doritos and use them to scoop ice cream out of a bucket. There is no worth in dieting, but there is tremendous worth in living our lives, and enhancing the quality of our lives by changing the way in which we live it.

Most of us are familiar with the credo "make small changes," and we do our best to do exactly that, hoping those small steps will become the first habit upon which we build a mountain of pristine habits that lead to a slender body, vigorous health, and birds chirping in an eternal blue sky. In other words, we're fantasizing about Nirvana, and fooling ourselves that the path to that mythical place begins in our mouth, and usually with the word "diet." We know it's not true, but we never give up hope, nor do we dig down to find the root of the problem.

Most of us would agree that a crisp and juicy apple tastes delicious, yet it continues to be hard to make the choice of eating that apple when there's a chocolate brownie sitting right next to it. We know the apple is the right choice, and we very much want the outcome of the right choice, but somehow or another that brownie grows legs and climbs into our mouths before we have a chance to grab the apple. It just doesn't make sense. Or does it.

The human body is designed with a beautiful simplicity. We crave just three things,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Dieting: assessing the real worth?
We want to hear your view. Write now!