Heard a thousand times: ‘I’m starting my diet Monday’

Published 8:00 am Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Mom…. Aunt Melissa said the “D” word…..

If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times… “I’m starting my diet on Monday” and then the sigh as if they’ve just been sentenced to eat cardboard for the rest of their lives. The word diet sets off a gamut of emotions for those who have been on the “dieting” rollercoaster.

There’s such a negative connotation to the word “diet”, I don’t even use it in my practice. It’s linked to such words as “die,” “deprivation,” “starvation,” and just plain “misery.”

I agree most of the diets out there can be described as all of the above.  They deprive you of major food groups and nutrients, they leave you starving at the end of the day, and the majority of them are so unrealistic they set you up for failure.  It’s unfortunate though that in our society we approach a “diet” with the “all or nothing” mentality. You know how the story goes. You start a “diet” on Monday and by Thursday you’ve “blown it.” Shame on you for eating that piece of birthday cake when the rules clearly state “no sugar!” You get disgusted, throw in the towel and decide to start again on Monday. Why?

The answer is, most diets are full of rules; don’t do this, don’t eat that, don’t combine this food with that one, etc… and they lead you to believe that if you don’t follow the rules you’ll fail.   Where’s the positive?  After all, you’re doing something positive by choosing to lose weight, why should you feel guilt or remorse if you happen to eat a “forbidden food.”  

It’s hard for most people to imagine that weight loss can be achieved without starvation or deprivation. What you need to do is approach it from a different angle. First, you have to remember Rome wasn’t built in a day.  Successful weight loss takes time.  You didn’t gain that extra 25 lbs. overnight so please don’t expect to lose it that way.

Secondly, you have to stop thinking of it as a “diet.”  Approach it with the mind set that you are going to start eating “smarter.”

If your current diet consist mostly of junk then any way that you can make a smarter choice is only going to benefit you in the end.  Most diet books don’t give you the basic knowledge you need to make smarter choices, they just dictate what you should and should not do.  You need a basic  understanding of food and what it does for our bodies and what makes one food a better choice than another, something those “diet” books fail to teach us.  We need to have a general understanding of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.  We need to know why fiber, calcium, and Vitamin D are important and how they keep us healthy. If we don’t focus all our attention on the scale and learn to make smarter healthier choices great things will happen. We start eating healthier and in turn we are healthier.  So say no to the “D” word and all the negative thoughts that go with it and say yes to “small changes” which can warrant big results.     

— Lisa Eisele, R.D., L.D. is an Oconee Nutrition Consultant at Cowles Clinic in Greensboro.