Define "Diet"

My friend’s sister is studying to be some sort of nutritionist. For one of her projects, she got a group together to interview us and sort of have a group discussion about nutrition and dieting and what we think about it. I came to some realizations about the modern concept of dieting.

When the concept of dieting comes to mind, the logical assumption “eating less” immediately follows. When did “eating healthy” become a less important aspect of dieting? When you go on a diet, instead of cutting out the snacks, shouldn’t it be more important to make sure everything you eat is healthy? Reducing your intake of food to a bare minimum might make you lose a few pounds, but it also increases the chance of vitamin deficiency and, past a certain point, malnutrition. Dieting shouldn’t mean starving yourself, but that’s the twisted view today’s society has warped it into.

There are a lot of “fad” diets out there. Atkins, all-carb, all-protein, no-carb, dairy diet…there’s so many advertised diets out on the market today. These diets make you change your eating habits, which is good. That’s what a diet should do. But its not good to completely cut out one area of nutrition or to substantially increase another area. Atkins discourages eating fruit because of the sugar in fruit, but isn’t fruit part of a healthy diet? A no-carb diet may sound good, but doesn’t the traditionally-accepted food pyramid put wheats and grains (aka, big source of carbs) as the base of good nutrition? If a person is willing to alter their eating habits to suit one of these particular “diets,” why not set up a balanced meal routine instead?

Dieting isn’t coupled with exercise enough. If you care enough to diet, you should care enough about your overall health. Exercising would help. Lose a couple pounds, reduce stress, build muscle…while most people are concerning themselves with their starvation-diets, very few individuals realize that exercising increases health while also accomplishing that goal of losing a few pounds.

When did the core concept of dieting become so vague in today’s world? Is dieting eating less, eating healthier, eating certain food? Is it about the weight you lose or the habits you change? Is it skipping the morning snack, or is it replacing the muffin with carrot sticks? At the end of the day, I guess “diet” is defined by the individual as what makes you feel good about yourself.