Don't Diet!

I have never been "on a diet" ... I'm not on a diet now. I read about eating in the paleo/primal style in Primal Blueprint and it made sense*; I read about avoiding wheat in Wheat Belly and it made sense:  we must eat good food that contributes to our health and well-being and we must avoid stuff that not only does no good, it actually harms our health. 

Our diet-- what we eat -- should be for the purpose of keeping us healthy. 

The word "diet" has been distorted today. We have the idea that its ok to eat whatever we want unless we need to lose weight. Weight is just one component of being healthy. In our culture today, "being on a diet" implies that you will reach your weight goal and then you can go back to whatever you were eating before. You may be willing to be deprived of what you want to eat for the immediate goal of weight loss. But it's been shown that most people who manage to lose weight on a "weight-loss diet" will gain that weight back (and more) when they get off the diet. So skip the diets.

Don't look at your diet as a way to lose weight by starving yourself or eating weird food for a while; instead look for the food that will make you your healthiest. Surround yourself with healthy real food. (Learn about real food here.) Recognize that a LOT of stuff that is sold is imitation food-like products, made for a long shelf life, made to make you crave more -- it's BAD stuff!

I continue to read about the primal lifestyle and read the success stories of other people to help me stay on track and not fall back into unhealthy eating. Here's a great video series about real food; you can watch it on youtube: Hungry for Change (there are 7 parts, each about 10 minutes). It's well worth watching. (There's also a book by the same name on amazon.) 








*While I agree with the primal lifestyle recommendation to eat real food, I don't agree that we evolved to eat like that.