Who Needs “a Diet” Anyway?
February 6th, 2008 | by Lisa |Obviously diet is a hot topic when it comes to fitness. Go to any workplace, any day of the week, around 12:00, and I am sure you will hear some discussion about a “diet.” Atkins, Weight Watchers, The Zone, South Beach, and on and on and on. I guarantee you, there is at least one person you each lunch with daily, who is “on a diet.” I personally, try to never say, “I am on a diet.” Instead, I prefer to use the more general definition of the word: ”diet: the foods eaten, as by a particular person or group” (dictionary.com). Instead of saying I am going to go on a diet, I tend to say, “I need to fix my diet.”
The reason I am so resistant to “going on a diet,” is because it implies I am using a specific, fad diet. Just the phrase “going on a diet,” implies that it is temporary, and at some point, I will be going off of it. Which then further implies that I will be gaining my fat back (notice I didn’t say weight!) ;) The only way to truly change your body and keep it that way, is to change your lifestyle. To eat healthy forever, and not to go back and forth from periods of hot dogs and pizza, to chicken breast and cottage cheese.
I am not saying that I have a perfect diet and a perfect lifestyle so do everything that I do. I admit that I too fluctuate with the strictness of my diet, and therefore with my fitness level. But unlike most fad dieters, each time I go through one of my “bad phases,” I gain less than I did in my previous “bad phase.” Most fad dieters however, tend to gain more fat when they go off the diet, than they had before they even started it.
Part of my “mission” is to stop having these bad phases and to eat healthy all the time. Sure, I might have the occasional slice of pizza once in a while, once I reach my fitness goal. It won’t kill me, as long as I am eating right the other 99% of the time, but the month-long periods of losing sight of my goals (i.e. the month of December) 
need to stop. I have, however, made enough lifestyle changes that, even through the darkest of times, there are still things that I will never eat. For example, McDonalds. There are some things that just should not be deemed fit for human consumption! 
In future blogs I will be outlining “what I am eating” in more detail. I tend to have three diet stages: the “fat loss” stage; when I am slimming down, the “everyday” stage; my normal diet, and my “pig-out” stage; those horrendous times when, for one reason or another, I lose sight of my fitness goals and temporarily turn into a Hoover.
In future entries, I will outline what types of foods fall into my three stages; Fat Loss, Everyday, and Hoover. As well, I am going to being posting a “food log,” telling you what I am eating each week, as I progress in my current ”fat loss” stage. Check it out under the “My Diet” tab at the top.
I hope that some of you will feel comfortable sharing what you have experienced with diets, and maybe even post your own “food log.”
Happy training (and eating!),
-Lisa
Tags: atkins, calories, carbs, Diet, fat, fat loss, Nutrition, protein, south beach, the zone, weight loss, weight watchers