It seems to me nowadays everybody badmouth "diets". According to prevalent thinking, what the obese/overweight person must do is simply change his lifestyle, acquire new healthy habits, and the weight will come down -"slowly and steadily", needless to say.
However, in my experience, the advice to "lifestyle changes" is not specific enough. It's very easy to deceive yourself: "OK, I'll have this chocolate bar. After all, I'm not on a diet. It's a lifestyle, and life surely includes chocolate". Even when healthy habits are really established, the progress is so slow that you lose motivation, and the next vacation the "lifestyle changes" are quickly forgotten. Been there, done that!
So I put the case for good old diets. With their clearly stated sets of rules, their forbidden foods, their substantial energy deficits that keep you motivated and bring about real, measurable results. (I have recently read that some study has shown a rapid weight loss is MORE easily maintained than a slow one).
Because I now understand that obesity is a chronic disease, that can't be cured but can be controlled by diet. Lifestyles are a luxury for the naturally thin.
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Diet = Short term fix. Most consider a "diet" something they can do short-term to lose weight and then return to their old ways.
Lifestyle Change = Long term, permanent changes in eating as well as thinking where food is concerned.
My Lifestyle Change began in April 2004. I will soon celebrate 11 years. Still going strong!
Me and my wife have both succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Very rare for two obese people in one house, actually morbidly obese, to both go to normal BMI. And effortless to maintain.
One of my main rules was NEVER to consider it a diet, ever. Now I do agree we made many small changes over months. I think that is awesome. But every change we made was I change I knew we could stick with for life. No calorie counting, awesome food now, no exercise needed for weight maintenance but for other benefits.
But if I went back to old foods I'd be morbidly obese again. It ultimately has to be lifestyle. But if making small changes, all for that, feels more like a diet, I am ok with you calling it that.
I'm with Jersey and Primal on this one, successful permanent changes only come with lifestyle changes you can live with.
My husband is a better example than me on this, actually. He's been carrying about 40 or so extra pounds for a while. And I feed him, it's not like he'd sneak junk food or eat at fast food places at lunch! I made his breakfast and dinner from scratch! And he got fat on MY WATCH!
All I've done is cut his carbs and increase his fats and in a little more than a month, without any other change on his behalf, no exercise beyond his physical work day, he's dropped over 11 pounds, without hunger, with improved mood and no energy drops!
Diet, to me, implies deprivation, something you're doing for a fixed period of time until you stop doing it because you've reach your goal. Lifestyle means you're doing something to improve your overall quality of life, and that's something you'd expect to be a lifetime process.
I don't think most people stick with low carbing over the long haul just because they need to be at a specific weight. They either find it an easy/enjoyable way to eat or they have specific health issues this way of eating addresses and weight loss happens to be a side effect of the diet.
Agree with RenewMe. BTW guys I might exit 3FC for good this time. It is just too pathetic. They erase my posts in other forums regularly.
Just remember 95.5% of people never succeed on eat less move more. And most of those that do, regain. The science is coming out fast and furious all the low fat, grains are good that made us sick, fat, and is destroying our society was wrong. And it doesn't take a genius. People started getting massively sick and obese and diabetic as soon as they went low fat high carb. In fact you have to twist yourself into a pretzel to not think low fat high carb is good and high fat low carb isn't.
It is just sad. Suzanne means well, but it is pathetic to erase the posts IMO. Oh well. The Internet is a big place, THANKFULLY.
Last edited by PrimalLarry; 02-13-2015 at 03:53 PM.
My mother is a retired dietitian. Her job was not teaching people to lose weight. It was, variably, planning meals served at institutions, teaching people with kidney issues the best way to eat given their condition, and nutrition education at a social services center.
The root word diet means simply what you eat. It is linguistically neutral, neither good nor bad. Yet it's been perverted to the point that I can't mention my diet without having to defend myself from the "ooh, diets are bad!" people who have no idea that I mean "what I eat to best maintain my health." I find it a little irritating.
Furthermore, I've read many "diet" books in my time and none of them said "do this for six weeks, get skinny, then go back to eating the way you did before." They all stress the importance of long term change.
Call your diet whatever you need to to make it work for you. But if you consume food, you have a diet.
EDIT: Sorry I sound grouchy. I am today. I know I'm fighting a losing battle because I've had this debate before, and I mean it when I say call it what you need to to stay healthy. But diet really isn't a bad word.
Last edited by Violette_R; 02-13-2015 at 06:08 PM.
Diets work great for losing weight. I ate less and moved more and the pounds dropped.
To maintain the loss, however, you need to change your lifestyle.
I move more, lift more, eat more and eat better. Including good sources of unrefined carbs. Like steelcut oats, dried figs, dark chocolate and dates. Just a few examples.
The only reason why eat less, move more isn't sustainable is people don't figure out the eat more, eat better until it's too late. I blame branded diets that fail to encourage/challenge people to experiment with and find foods that work for them, both physically and mentally.
Ian yours is working because you get enough protein to satiated. And fat from your fish also. People on carb heavy diets get so little nutrition overall that they remain hungry. Their bodies crying out for more nutrients.
Also need fat to absorb nutrients in food. This is why low fat almost always fail. Happy Valentines day everyone.
I agree Larry. I get a lot of protein. And a lot of good fats (Omega 3s to Omega 6 ratio). And some good carbs. Which is different to zero carbs.
Our only points of departure are: 1) zero versus some "good" carbs; 2) good (i.e. essential fatty acids) fats versus all fats; and 3) protein.
You appear to advocate zero carbs, all fats and I don't know what on protein.
I favor moderate "good" i.e. unrefined carbs, only essential fatty acids (especially omega 3s) and lots of protein.
Larry and I are following similar lifestyles, and its not ZERO carb, just LOW carb, in my case less than 10% of my daily calories which mostly come from veggies. Protein is about 20% to 25%, not higher. The rest is fats.
I had a weight trainers background of eating a 40/30/30 diet, transitioning to a high fat diet required accepting non main stream thinking but it's been the right decision for both my husband and I, we both feel better physically and mentally and we're losing pounds and/or inches. Feed your body what your particular metabolism needs and weight loss happens automatically, go figure!
I agree with Violette R. that originally "diet" only meant "what you eat". Later it came to mean "a planned strategy of eating" with some aim, usually losing weight. Only later on did it get its current derogatory sense of "quick fix". It's the second of these three meanings that I'm defending. A diet as a tool.
Of course if someone uses that tool successfully and loses weight, he cannot go back to his previous way of eating... the one that made him fat. He must follow another diet, this one aimed at maintenance. But, even if he follows it for a lifetime, as he should, it's still a diet.
PrimalLarry, I would be very sorry if you leave. You are a big source of inspiration!
Pipina - After reading your original post and as I started reading the responses I felt that you were using "diet" differently from how many responders were using it.
I think that you were using it in the sense of a "plan" for eating that will help you lose weight. That is, as opposed to just sort of winging it. For me, simply saying let me eat less and move more is just too amorphous to get me there.
I use a lot of different numbers and rules. This is not a temporary way to lose weight. I will do this when I am at my goal weight which isn't that far away.
I am a member of WW and I do stick to a certain points range each week. Once I am back to goal, it will be a slightly higher points range.
I track calories with MFP and try to stick around a certain calorie range with a certain allocation of macronutrients. It isn't rigid, but it is a plan. Those numbers will change a bit when I get to goal, but I will still track what I eat.
I track my activity with my Fitbit and I have certain goals I want to meet -- how much exercise I do each week, the intensity of it, the calorie deficit that I create and so on. That is also part of my weight loss plan aka diet.
And my maintenance plan will be simply extending what I'm doing on my current plan, while eating a tiny bit more food.
Thank you for commenting, Koshka. Yes, that's exactly what I meant, that the so-called lifestyle changes are too amorphous to be of any help -for me, anyway. I need a structured and measurable approach. And of course I know that weight control is a lifelong effort.
You may not call it lifestyle changes, but if you don't change your lifestyle I can guarantee you will gain it all back. WW banks on you returning to lose the weight more then once. They are being sued in Great Britian for their claims and poor long term success rate. I went to WW for many years, gaining and losing the same pounds. I was even a leader! When I finally said enough of paying for something that doesn't help me and changed to a low carb WOE, I lost the weight and have maintained it.
In defense of diets (vs "lifestyle changes")
