Diets & Dieting - A Word of Difference
If you are a normal person, then you’ve probably tried to diet. If you haven’t been suckered into one by television, books, or the internet, then you have probably tried to on your own. Whether you’re too fat, too skinny, or just right, it doesn’t matter. Advertising and pretty much everyone around you is promoting dieting that will get you into the shape of your life if you just eat between the first and third Sundays of the fourth month of the nocturnal calendar. Oh yeah, and you have to be wearing slippers and red meat is forbidden from this diet.
Let’s get real. When you diet, you basically set goals. Some goals are more far fetched than others, but the bottom line is that they exist so that you can reach some sort of fat loss, muscle gain, or combination of both. When dieting with the “Atkins,” “South-Beach”, or “No Belts while Eating Diet,” you’re using the verbal definition of the word.
diet verb - to eat sparingly or according to prescribed rules
For a period of time, you are following a set of specific rules to lose weight. What happens when you can’t follow these rules for more than a few days, or if you’ve reached your dieting goals and go back to your original way of eating? You’re either not going to follow you’re not going to get far in the first place, or gain the weight back which an all too common story. The goals are noble, but the method is flawed. I believe in dieting only when you are using it for a specific weight loss or weight gain goal, and then you return to your healthy eating style afterwards. What I don’t believe is in the bullshit “mainstream” diets that are basically tricks with smoke and mirrors to help you lose a few pounds in the first week or two that will make you forget you just paid $20 for pages of nonsense.
Now, what happens if you treated diet as the noun word type?
diet noun - food and drink regularly provided or consumed, the usual food and drink consumed by an organism.
An animal’s diet is what it eats everyday. A lion or shark doesn’t change its diet to some fresh veggies because it thinks it is too fat. Assuming that food is always available in the form of prey, then they eat the same thing everyday. It never gets too fat in the first place because Darwinism will kill it off. Only the strong survive.
That is not to say that which type of definition of the word you are using has any effect on what happens. The problem is going to extremes “to diet.” People change their eating habits from fast-food and late night snacking to fish and veggies overnight. That’s harder than it sounds. When you change your “diet,” the foods you eat everyday, by forming good eating habits then you can achieve particular results. The benefit you gain from changing the way you eat permanently is that it doesn’t feel like you’re “dieting.” You’re just “eating,” and that is something we do everyday. When someone asks you, “We’re going to Burger King for dinner. Do you want anything?” you shouldn’t say “No, I’m dieting,” but rather “That’s not something I regularly consume.”
