I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this ever since I heard someone say “healthy diet” (as many people do).
I am one of thousands who has come to the conclusion that diets don’t work and I have vowed not to diet anymore (although I struggle with this sometimes because of the years of dieting and brainwashing in my past).
I absolutely hate, to the point of loathing, the word diet. It is a dirty four letter word for me and I run in the opposite direction every time I hear it. I know for some that may seem extreme but it’s honestly how I feel. The word diet brings so many negative connotations to my mind. When I hear diet, I hear:
- restriction
- excessive water drinking
- weighing (not only everything you eat but your own body)
- measuring (again, not only everything you eat but your own body)
- good vs. bad (me, my behavior, certain foods, etc….)
- calorie counters
- food labels
- weekly weigh ins
- blind faith in someone else’s plan for me
- disappointment (in me and in the diet)
- feeling less than
- people trying to bribe me to do better
Yes, it is extreme…how I feel about that little four letter word. It probably sounds pretty silly to some. Maybe after some time of deprogramming myself, I will get to the point where it doesn’t bother me but right now, the words “healthy diet” are like an oxymoron to me. The two just don’t go together. Hear me out…..please.
I think most of us have lost sight of what “healthy” means. We all know what “diet” means and those pushing diets would like for all of us to believe that their diet is healthy. This is where common sense should come in. Notice I said, “should” come in. Not all diets are healthy and I would even go so far as to say 99% of all diets are not healthy for a majority of people.
When I type about intuitive eating/living, I’m really talking about living a life of common sense based on YOUR body. These diets that are being touted as the best thing since sliced bread are made up for the masses and do not take into account that everyone is different.
Common sense and intuition tells me that if I want a good night’s rest without my stomach cramping like crazy, I avoid eating corn. If I want to sleep through the night and not get up to pee six times a night, I stop drinking liquids around 8:00 or so. If I don’t want a severe headache, I don’t eat sugar to the point of fullness.
Just as WRT2 uses a common sense approach to her diabetes, we all should use common sense and intuition to fulfill our body’s needs…not only in what we eat but in the amount of rest we get and the amount of motion and activity we incorporate into our lives.
However, I’d like to expound on something here. When your body has medical needs, nothing changes. You still need to listen to it. I believe with all my heart that you do what is necessary to take care of yourself and if that means frequent doctor visits, becoming more knowledgeable of your condition by researching, exercising more or less than you would like or even avoiding or eating certain foods to maintain a healthy body, then that’s what you do. Period. Again, I’m talking about common sense here.
I honestly believe we have been overthinking this food thing. I know I have. My life, for so many years, consisted of food logs, weigh ins, cooking certain foods certain ways and doing things I hated because I was so focused on dieting and not focused enough on just living. Dieting takes an awful lot of effort and the results are rarely positive so why not resort to common sense instead. Common sense really shouldn’t take us a lot of effort or thought (like being on a diet would).
In my opinion, diets are not healthy so I challenge you all to rethink your healthy diet. If you’re on a “healthy diet”, are you still really dieting but sugar coating it (no pun intended) and trying to fool yourself into thinking you’re really not? Are you listening to your body or are you loosely following a diet you’ve used in the past? Are you still reading labels? Is there a medical reason you are being so strict in your food choices or is this the result of years of brainwashing?
In closing, I want to use my favorite quote a friend of mine taught me: “Give yourself some grace.” Live your life and love yourself. Trust your body to tell you what it needs. It will tell you if you open up to the possibilities.
~sas
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Ugh. That picture with the sallow celery and the other diet food literally makes my stomach nauseous. And honestly – I think “scientists” have no idea what is actually good for the human body. Not to mention the fact that the marketing industry has said scientists saddled up like a horse and ride them to whatever answer is most profitable.
Plus, not to be too defeatists, but OMG everything is going to kill you. Even if you eat & drink a 100% organic diet with perfect macrobiotic balance, science is still going to warn of your impending death from the plastic in the chemicals you store your food in, or any number of the 100 bagillion other forms of early death that are knocking on our doorsteps.
So, I guess my slightly curmudgeon opinion is – do the best you can and don’t drive yourself crazy. Healthy diet does not equal guaranteed good health forever. It means feeling and functioning the best in your body by your standards. IMHO 🙂
Oh and nice post SAS!
Thanks for the reminder.
How about adding deprivation and feeling less than because I couldn’t just eat like everyone else.
The thing that keeps me away from diets is the knowledge that they don’t even work!
Nice post!
I think it is worth considering that “diet” doesn’t have to be a nasty word–if you think about it, “diet” is simply a noun meaning “that which you put into your body to sustain it.”
Birds live on a “diet” of seeds and berries. Lions live on a “diet” of raw meat. It should follow, then, that a human’s “diet” is inclusive of anything their body will process as fuel. As a species, we are unique in that we have a truly varied palatte, and many options to choose from in terms of creating our own version of a “diet”–whether it is “healthy” or not is dependent on each person and how well they are fulfilling their dietary/nutritional needs.
It’s when we turn “diet” into a verb that it takes on all of those nasty/judgemental/subjective connotations that you have mentioned (and more, I’m sure).
It is my recommendation that the next time someone talks about “dieting” in that irritating verby way, you should point out to them that you already have a “diet”…
The Diet of Whatever the Fuck I Feel Like Putting in My Mouth Today.
This is totally nitpicking semantics and you just may have different experiences than I do, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the phrase “healthy diet” used to refer to calorie restriction per se, but more in the sense of what kinds of things someone eats, as in, “This bird’s diet consists of seeds and bugs; the traditional Japanese diet includes lots of rice and fish; Billy Joe Bob’s diet consists largely of pizza,” so I think you might be conflating the two different meanings of the word diet a bit, but on the other hand, maybe not, because a “healthy diet” conjures images of raw veggies (yum) and reduced-fat crap (blech). I just don’t think the phrase necessarily implies restricted amounts of raw veggies and reduced-fat crap. I hate the word too, though, because even when it is innocuous it reminds me of the non-innocuous version, and I hate the phrase “healthy diet” as well because I hate reduced-fat crap and bans on cookies.
[…] on a diet’ has so many horrible connotations both for physical and mental well being. Better writers than I have mused upon the main bad connotations of the word ‘diet’ in the sense of ‘to […]
That’s okay; I hate it when people turn “diet” into a dirty word. 🙂
Your diet is what you eat. WHATEVER you eat is your diet. Not having a diet would be . . . umm . . . starvation 🙂
Being opposed to starvation, I have a diet. I’m actually trying to have a more healthful diet. Specifically, diet seems to be the best way for one’s body to get vitamins and minerals, so I am slowly adding recommendations from the Canada Food Guide to what I eat.
Of course, like all such documents, the Canada Food Guide has both positive commandments (eat at least one serving of orange vegetables per day) and negative commandments (don’t eat more than 2 tablespoons of fat per day.) Frankly, they can keep the negative commandments. I’m revising my diet (what I eat) to get more valuable, balanced nutrients. Negatives aren’t going to give me more nutrients, so I don’t particularly value them. 🙂
Mostly, I -am- listening to my body. Even when it says, “Yuck, I hate carrots. Look! Peaches are on the list! Let’s have those instead.” 🙂
The only real restriction I’m doing is for financial reasons, not diet ones; I can’t afford to buy a whole can of peaches each day, so I restrict the amount of peaches I do eat on any one day so that I can afford to have one serving a day all month. I fill up on something cheap, like potatoes. This is sub-ideal when what I really want is a piece of fruit, but one does what one can with what one has.
Thank you for this post. As someone who only recently got off the diet tilt-a-twirl, I am just starting to adopt intuitive eating into my life. However, I’m stymied by two things:
1. For the past few months, I’ve been suffering from dysphagia (difficulty swalloing) and this means that while I’m trying to listen to my body and figure out what it wants/craves/needs, there are certain foods I cannot eat because they make my condition worse.
2. Like you, I have been brainwashed with the dieting mentality for so long, it’s hard for me to practice intuitive eating. One thing I have done is stop reading food labels. (Because of the dysphagia, I do have to read some food labels to figure out if foods have ingredients – caffeine, acid, etc. – that would exacerbate it).
I’m also trying to find an activity I love. For years, I was a gym rat, and I own a bunch of workout DVDs all of which are aimed at promoting weight loss. I’d like to take dance classes, karate, etc., but these things are so expensive, they’re just not possible for me right now (recently finished grad school and have a mountain of student loans to pay off).
All of that said, I *do* feel better about myself and my body most days. Honestly, the list of things you associate with dieting have been a big part of my life for so long – calorie counting, reading food labels, regular weigh ins. I stopped weighing myself when I decided I was done w/dieting. The last time I was weighed was at the doctor’s office and it actually felt good not to be panicky before and after I saw THAT number.
Ever since I decided to stop dieting, I feel my relationship with food slowly becoming healthier. I don’t obsess over it any more. Eating is just a part of my day. I enjoy it, and there’s no angst involved in every. single. meal.
I know this approach goes against the grain of our diet obsessed culture, but it feels right to me to listen to MY body, not what someone else has to say about what I eat.
can I be annoying and ask if your hatred of the word extends to the Japanese governing body?
I do understand what you’re saying, but I think wildcatjen said it best-diet isn’t a verb(or at least, it shouldn’t be) a diet is what you eat everyday-no matter if you have to change that to work with medical issues or not.
For those who might not get this comment right off the bat… the Japanese call their Parliament type governing branch the Diet… if you search wiki on Japanese Diet, you can find all sorts of info on their system of gov. 🙂
Sas, I so hear you. I wonder if “diet” for you is a word that you would benefit by reclaiming… just like we reclaimed the word “fat.”
Like you, my hackles raise big and angry when I hear diet used as a verb. It’s all over the tv, magazines and conversation everywhere. Agh. It’s a cultural obsession, indeed.
Let me just say that I understand well how a word can be so triggering. I am going to remind you to be patient with yourself and take your time in reclaiming any triggering word or idea like this one. Healing takes time, as we both know… and that’s normal and okay. Triggers happen.
In the meantime… maybe you could intentionally misunderstand when people use diet as a verb and then snarkily ask them why they would walk about the Japanese Parliamentary system in such an odd way… 😉 That could be seriously fun and smart-assalicious! Hehehehehehe
ooh-I actually really like the deliberate misunderstanding. but I also am generally fond of responding to annoying people with smart-assaliciousness.
LOL… we made a word!!! Whooo hooooooo!!!
Anyone wanna try it in a sentence? 😀
I already know what the word diet means in relation to Japan’s government because I am smarty-pants who knows lots of interesting trivia.
I am kind of surprised people are so willing to defend the word diet. When I was 8 a bully neighbor girl told me I needed to go on a diet to gain weight. I know I had not contracted the ED at that time b/c I thought she was stupid and told her a diet is to loose weight. See – you don’t have to be right to be a smarty pants know-it-all. If the ED thinking had been ingrained by that point I would have been wildly flattered
Although I understand that diet has a variety of meanings, the primary thing I associate with the word diet is all the negatives posted above rather than bird food. The culture has pretty much taken the word diet over and I am in no hurry to take it back although
I agree with you completely! I have never gone on a diet, and now more than ever, I know I never will.
You have never gone on a diet? How amazing. I am so happy for you. Can you tell us more about it? I don’t want to pry but I find this almost heroic and want to know what it looks like on the other side.
Thanks!
I’ve been going through a “phase” myself around thinking about maybe trying to change around my eating — and everywhere I turn it feels like a diet, so I’m reacting internally like it is. I feel like I’ve been damaged for life by dieting. My mind feels like a dangerous part of town when I think about dieting.
I hate this word, too, even though I know it doesn’t have to have those connotations.
Great post, Sass!