Ever got yourself a light meal for lunch, like a salad or sandwich, and heard “are you on a diet?” from the person you’re eating with? The word diet, in our culture, has been given so many different meanings. It could be anything from cutting back on food intake to all-out fasting. It could last anywhere from a day to 7 days to a lifetime.
But are short-term diets really sustainable?
Don’t get me wrong. Nearly all the diet programs out there DO work. These deliver visible results in a really short span of time helping you drop pounds in just a matter of days. I went on a popular 7-day diet about 7 years ago and lost 8 pounds in just 3 days. I was happy it was working but on the 4th day, I had to stop. I was feeling lightheaded and cranky and barely had enough energy to concentrate in school (I was in college at the time). I began eating normally again and gained those 8 pounds back by the end of the week. The good thing was, I was able to focus again and I didn’t get any more of those mood swings.
I guess my point here is, short-term diets are mostly meant for people with medical conditions. The 7-day program I tried was designed for patients who are about to undergo heart surgery and needed to lose weight FAST.
My conclusion: You WILL lose weight but you’ll only gain it back as quickly as you lost it.
So let the word DIET mean something different. Turn your entire view of the subject around and you just might find yourself shedding off all that excess weight quicker than you can finish that vegan chocolate cake.
Your diet shouldn’t be something you go on when you need to lose weight for an upcoming wedding but something you live out every single day, reflecting in each one of your meals.
Don’t make your diet a punishment for not being able to live up to the standards you set for yourself. Rather, let it be your medium of nourishing your body and fuelling up for greater things ahead.
NO IDEA HOW TO START? A FEW THINGS YOU MAY WANT TO TAKE NOTE OF:
- It’s okay to start by tracking the amount of calories you consume. However, you can only do this for so long. Use calorie tracking as training wheels and get a feel of how eating good food is like. Learn to let go of it eventually. If you really feel the urge to watch what you’re eating, keep a food journal so you can monitor your eating habits and the kinds of food you eat.
- If you do count calories, think of your caloric limit as a daily budget. You either spend it on something worthwhile or you spend it on something unnecessary. Choose quality food over empty calories. Oftentimes, the better ones leave you with so much more room to eat (*cough* vegetables).
- Count the nutritional value of the food you eat rather than just focusing on other things like calories and fat all the time. Highly beneficial food can be high in calories and contain much (good) fat. See The Many Faces of 200 Calories
- Eat until you’re satisfied, not FULL. That’s about 60% of your stomach. 20% of the space should be left for water and 20% should be empty leaving room for food to move around as the stomach digests it. This way, you help your body absorb nutrients from your food more and you don’t end up wasting the calories you consume.
- GET MOVING. This is a really old one but I just had to bring it up. Moving burns calories. Regular exercise boosts your body’s capability to burn calories and fat allowing you to trim down and shed excess fat faster. Remember though, that exercising is still not an excuse to binge or to consume food that doesn’t bring any nutritional value.
Featured Image from Persephonemagazine.com
