5/20/2017 0 Comments Dirty, 4-Letter D WordEveryone has uttered the same fatal words upon struggling to pull his/her zipper from the opened position to closed: “I need to go on a diet.” You might be questioning my word choice right now. “Fatal? How can the recognition of a problem be fatal?” It is not the recognition that I find problematic here. It is that dirty, four letter D word that always pops up when we start to feel ourselves exceed our ideal weights: “diet.” The word “diet” has been lingering in the dark shadows of our language for quite a long while, but it’s first recorded emergence was in the 13th century. It can be traced back to Middle English (diete), Medieval Latin (diaeta), and Greek (diaita). Etymology of the word suggests that it originally meant, “manner of living,” a general term associated with all aspects of life, but often attached to the food one habitually consumes. Modern dictionaries cite the primary definition of the word as, “food and drink regularly provided or consumed.” So, the denotation has shifted ever so slightly from indicating a general way of living, to specifically regarding the way one eats to live. If one abides by the denotation of the word, a diet could consist a whole variety of foods. When I was 300 pounds and eating macaroni and cheese with pizza for dinner once a week, that was my diet. However, human beings are very rarely 100% literal, thus the reason that particular words can mean exactly the same thing, but carry positive, negative, or neutral connotations. When we hear the word “diet,” we understand it to indicate restrictions in the way we eat, often for the sake of losing weight. Be honest; when was the last time you told yourself you needed to go on a diet and didn’t groan at the prospect? For a person who is used to eating poorly (regardless of weight), it is perceived as a negative thing to have to “go on a diet.” This negativity reveals itself in a variety of reactions, depending on the person: fear, anxiety, denial, etc. “Dieting” also suggests a temporary state of being. If you follow the connotative definition of “diet,” and restrict your eating habits in attempt to lose weight, what happens once you’ve achieved that goal? Do you go back to eating macaroni and cheese with pizza once a week? Those are the eating habits that got you, and me, and so many other people to an uncomfortable weight in the first place. Therefore, you can likely assume that resorting to those old eating habits will offer the same results that they had in the past. It is based on these connotations, then, that I find the word to be so fatal. When we begin a “diet,” we look at it as a temporary restriction on our eating habits. The negative emotions attached to the idea of restriction inevitably lead to avoidance, which explains why starting to change one’s dieting habits is so difficult, and the transient nature that we adhere to them once we muster up the courage to do so is often why so many people have a hard time keeping weight off once it is lost. I am a walking, talking, breathing example of this. Throughout the process of each of my “unsuccessful” attempts to lose weight, I viewed my diet in this way. There was always an “end of the road,” an “I can’t wait to eat normally again,” a “won’t it be great when I don’t have to eat salads at every meal?” So, when I stepped on the scale and saw that I had lost 5 pounds, 10 pounds, or once even 20 pounds, I was so satisfied with myself that I decided I did not need to diet any longer! And then I’d gain 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30, 40, 50… . My final attempt at weight loss was successful only after I finally accepted the literal definition of the word “diet” and stopped motivating myself with the illusion that I would be able to return to the unhealthy eating habits that I had when I was overweight. To do so would be fatal to the progress that I had made. If you take one message away from this particular blog, I hope it is this: There is NO finish line when it comes to nutrition. If you want to lose weight and then maintain that weight after it is lost, you will never be able to eat the way you once ate. This is not a temporary change. This is a lifelong pursuit of habitually eating healthily. Period.
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