Why Diets Are Dumb

There are two usages for the word "diet" as it pertains to food. The first is in reference to the "usual fare" that a particular species or group of people eat, as in "the diet of Japanese people is less fattening than Americans." The second usage is the one most Americans are used to. "A regimen of eating and drinking so as to lose weight," says Webster. Of course many people, including Americans are on diets that are regimental for reasons other than weight loss such as avoiding allergens and accommodating special health conditions. It's not this kind of diet that I am addressing but rather the kind we are alluding to when we say we are "going on a diet."

I have two major qualms with this kind of diet. First, they are often deceptive when commercialized, and second, they are temporary.

Any American who has set foot into a Barnes and Noble in the past five years can probably list at least half a dozen diet books that have been best-sellers off the top of their head. There seems to be no end to opinions as to the number of different food group combinations and individual ingredients we can avoid, or the number of indigenous cultures we can emulate to drop pounds. One person says to eat all meat and watch your fat (and kidneys and liver) disappear. Another says "Non! Non! Eat like the French do!" The thing they have in common: someone will buy the book and try it out, and no matter how long they stick with it the booksellers will make the same amount and get the same amount of hype. Diet programs, on the other hand, make money by convincing you that you need them beside you to lose weight. There is only so much money to be made by counseling, and only so long that you will listen before getting annoyed or getting the hang of it yourself, making them unnecessary, so they aim to convince you that in order for you to be successful you also need X amount of their super duper weight loss products. The problem here: have you ever looked at the ingredients of some of those protein bars? Not exactly organic.

In order to make a profit, diet engineers have to appeal to something we desperately want to hear. They will often say that their program will be easy or that it works quickly. Changing habits is seldom easy, and your body can only burn so much fat in any given amount of time. When we get discouraged, we are tempted to quit. In fact, the connotation the word "diet" has is that it something out of the usual that we will have to suffer through for a short amount of time before we can go back to normal (and gain the weight back). Even when we receive sound nutritional advice, we aren't often able to stick with it long enough to make it work. Many diets are difficult to continue for a long period because of the wear they cause on your body and some are just plain expensive, therefore promulgating their tendency to be temporary.

In my brief stint as a weight loss counselor I found that there was a certain kind of attitude that more often accompanied success at keeping the pounds off: "I'm in this for the long haul and I want to really change this aspect of my life." These people realize that it was in most cases the way they ate that got them here, and the way they eat will get them back here if they don't change it permanently. But change to what? With so many ideas out there about what is good and bad, how are we to know? I say use common sense. Our body needs food because food = fuel.

What constitutes food? At my current job as a pregnancy counselor I try to make it as simple as possible for my clients: If it didn't come from the ground, a tree, or an animal, it has something in it that is most likely not natural. So, since you've never seen microwave burritos on a branch or Little Debbie snack in a garden patch, you probably want to avoid them. If you want an all-in-one meal or snack, make it yourself so you are sure to know what was put in it. If it can sit in a box on a shelf for 6 months without change, it's most likely getting help from chemicals.

This is a simplistic way to look at things and the hope is that they will be able to move beyond that once they have gained more knowledge about their bodies and how the things they ingest affect them, but we have to start somewhere and enrolling in a nutrition course isn't practical for most people. I also emphasize that the changes they are making for their baby now are changes that will never stop benefiting them. Our basic need for fuel will never change, so there's not really a time that it will be good for us to go back to regularly eating whatever it was in whatever capacity that made us gain weight in the first place.