Which Is The Best Diet?

“Well, this is going to start well – I’m not a fan of diets.  

I suppose if we used the first dictionary definition of the word “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats” then I’m cool with that one but the secondary one sparks on to say “restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight” which makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.  The words restrict  and small amounts don’t fit well for me and the whole “diet culture” has further clouded this with things thrown about like clean eating to which the opposite surely has to be that other food are dirty.  The labelling of food as good and bad, even suggesting that you have an allocation of sinful behaviour each week or that you should replace your meals with liquid, your fruit & vegetables with tablets or restrict/remove whole entire food groups because they are currently being demonised is abhorrent.  

Yeah, we all have a diet – it’s the food we eat BUT I would much prefer us to look at your nutrition – the nourishment of your body.  

The media and the industry have obviously made an absolute minefield out of the whole thing and no wonder people are utterly confused, overwhelmed, disheartened and living a constant cycle of being “on” or “off” diets.  

Here’s the thing, when there’s no wagon to fall off then no falls occur.  

I know that people like to have something some people do like rules to follow to create a sense of structure but what often occurs is that these rules do little to assist you in learning how to nourish your body or what your body needs. 

I wanna start with some little bits to help you; 

Some foods are calorie dense, some foods are calorie sparse.  Meaning that some food gives us more energy and some food gives us less.  Calorie isn’t a bad word, despite it being another one that has been demonised.  It’s simply a unit of measurement.  We don’t demonise a kilometre or a millimetre or any other unit of measurement. 

Some foods are nutritionally (as it the nutrients within them) dense and some foods are nutritionally sparse. 

All foods are form part of your nutritional plan. 

Being able to make the changes/adhere to new eating patterns is important.  So often I talk to people who are trying to eat the equivalent nutrition to that of a toddler and wondering why they feel hungry/grumpy/sad all the time. 

Your body doesn’t reset what it needs at midnight each night and allocates you a new balance.  Like a bank, your balance doesn’t get whipped at the end of the day.  It’s about the deposits and withdrawals that you make over time/on a consistent basis that tell a whole story. 

Losing weight is about much more than food.  Yes, creating a negative balance between energy going in and energy going out is what creates that loss but it’s more complicated than that.  Each person is an individual.  Has individual make up, circumstances, situations, barriers to cross, mindsets to navigate and therefore it’s not about having a blanket approach because well it worked for Kelly.  

Food is more than nutrition.  Food is social, food can be emotional, food can be fuel for the body and equally it can be fuel for the soul. 

Unless there is a medical reason to do so, cutting out whole food groups (which divide into fats, carbohydrate & protein) isn’t optimal for your body. 

Restriction and feel restricted or deprived sucks. 

SO, it’s much more than following an off the shelf diet, it’s about working out what works for you and that’s exactly what I work with people to do.