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Why I dislike the word diet (and what we should replace it with!)
Have I told you how much I dislike the word diet?
If you have been following my blog for a while you will know why, but just in case you are visiting my blog for the first time, today I am going to climb back up on my soap box and explain why we need to eliminate the word diet from the dictionary and replace it with a new word that means ‘healthy’.
Our obsession with quick weight loss appears to be growing all the time, you only have to pick up a magazine at the shop and I guarantee there will be some celebrity on the cover whose magical new diet enabled them to lose 10kg in an ridiculously short space of time.
Unfortunately what this does is two things that are very destructive in my opinion. Firstly it promotes ‘fast weight loss’, giving us an expectation that large amounts of weight can be lost and kept off in a very short space of time, I have been in the fitness Industry for a very long time and with maybe one or two exceptions I haven’t seen anyone lose a lot of weight fast and then successfully keep it off over long term.
Secondly our obsession with fast diets promotes shortcuts to success. They tell us that all we need to do is replace food with a shake or drink lemon tea for three days straight or eat calorie controlled food in a plastic container and we will lose weight so quickly that we won’t believe it! They then roll out some people who have successfully used the program and in the very small print say ‘results not typical’ or something to that effect….PLEASE!!.
Haven’t we all been around long enough to know that if it sounds too good to be true it normally is?
Isn’t it about time we started to think about food in terms of nourishing our bodies with unprocessed food instead of worrying about how many calories are in it?
Do we have the guts to say that we are throwing away the word ‘diet’ forever and replacing it with something that means that we are going to start eating for health rather than worrying about our meals and what we should or should not be eating?
I think it’s time we accepted all three of these things in our lives.
Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying, being within a healthy weight is very important for you but I strongly believe the way in which we think about weight loss needs to change if we are ever going to have a healthy relationship with food and get out of the vicious diet circle.
Over the past year I have met many amazing women through my #NOEXCUSES and #NOLIMITS 8 Week Programs and I know a lot of them have previously tried every diet under the sun and been on the ‘Binge – Diet’ yoyo cycle for many years.
My goal through my programs is to teach people to eat to nourish their body, to educate them what foods are good for them and to think about food very differently from how they have in the past. These are new habits than form over 8 weeks but that will benefit you for a lifetime.
I don’t put parameters around a certain weight loss goal for the program as I really want everyone to focus on being a ‘certain healthy’ rather than a ‘certain weight’.
Sure you will lose weight as you start to eat regular meals containing whole natural foods but for me weight loss is a by-product of eating well and should not be the main focus of your efforts.
I vote for banishing the word diet forever!
I think we need to start talking Fit not Skinny!
I think we need to start to embrace whole natural foods into our lives!
I believe that we need to start setting realistic expectations of ourselves when it comes to losing weight.
And we definitely need to stop reading magazines that promote unhealthy fast unsustainable weight loss!
So as I climb back down from my soapbox today – hopefully you now understand why I dislike the word diet so much and just maybe I have encouraged you to start thinking about food a little differently and to think before you jump on the next quick fix diet bandwagon.
Stay healthy
Kim x