Common Sense is Key: The Healthy Diet

How many diets have you tried? One? Three? Ten? Odds are good that, no matter how many you have tried, most have not been good for you. The key to consistent, healthy, permanent weight loss is a healthy diet.

So what exactly is a healthy diet?

There are dozens of likely responses to that question, depending on who you ask. Before that question can be truly answered, an understanding of what makes a diet is needed.

What you eat every day, on a habitual basis, is your diet; it is that simple. So a healthy diet would mean eating things that are good for you on a consistent basis. Just as important is not eating things that are not good for you. Eating what most would consider healthy foods and mixing them with heart-plugging quantities of fried chicken and pork rinds is counter-productive.

Dieting

"Dieting" is a word that has come to mean "eating a specific diet in order to lose weight." The earliest record of dieting comes from the turn of the century, and the first fad diet from the 1930's. The Hollywood Diet was the first published diet that made the rounds of American consumers, pushing dieter to eat only specific foods, such as grapefruits (one of the reasons it was also known as the Grapefruit Diet) in order to manipulate the body's natural weight loss mechanisms.

Fad diets take advantage of American obsession with being fit, strangely counter to American obesity levels. Are these diets healthy? It can be hard to tell, since many, like The Atkins' Diet, provide scientific proof of their safety and effectiveness, yet produce waves of opposition from conservative professionals in the dietary field.

Can the experts be trusted? This is another hard question to answer, as many are paid for their testimony or have special interest groups footing their research. They sure sound like they know what they are talking about, and all sides of the issue seem able to produce testimony from people who have either lost a ton of weight in a short period of time, or suffered health problems when following the prescribed dietary instructions.

All of which begs the question:

How can I make sure I am on a healthy diet?

A healthy diet may be one that is designed to produce weight loss, but there are other goals, including building muscle, detoxifying the body, or supporting aging joints and bones. In order to determine if the diet you are on supports your goals and is still healthy, consider the things some diets will do that are un-healthy.

Rapid weight loss

While rapid weight loss sounds like just the ticket for bikini season, it typically means the dieter has not developed good eating habits, and will likely return to pre-weight loss consumption. The result? The pounds come back, and they usually bring friends.

Vitamin deficiency

Sticking to one food item, or even a handful of food items, over a long period of time could easily deprive your body of essential vitamins, minerals and other goodies. The human body was designed with variety in mind; your healthy diet should be as well.

Bad habits

As mentioned before, building bad habits (or sometimes worse; not building good habits) while dieting can lead to a lifetime of frustration and poor health. Many fad diets are following dollar signs and bandwagons, and are not necessarily concerned with your long term health.

Now that you have a good understanding of what is at stake, make plans to build a healthy diet by doing the following:

Talk to your doctor

A visit with the family doctor is always recommended before beginning a diet regimen; he or she knows your body's history and can warn you if something prescribed in a diet book could put you in jeopardy. The diet-book author just doesn't know you that well.

Plan your diet

Your food choices should be thoughtful, but also plan on sticking to your diet for a long time. Not only is slower weight loss recommended for achieving lasting results, but the habits you build will last you for life.

Exercise

This point cannot be made strongly enough: you cannot achieve a healthy body with exercise in one form or another. A super-fad diet that peels off the pounds while you sit on the couch is either myth or potentially dangerous. Developing a regular routine of working out, even if it is just walking, will take you to your goals faster and more healthily that attempting them without.

In the end it is up to the dieter to determine what makes a healthy diet. Personal taste, medical history, level of exercise and even budget all have their roles to play. As long as common sense is coupled with research and determination, a healthy lifestyle is an achievable goal.