1 noun
a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed
b: habitual nourishment
c: the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason
d: a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight
2 verb
1: to cause to take food
2: to cause to eat and drink sparingly or according to prescribed rules
This is the definition of diet in Merriam-Webster. And despite the fact that the dictionary is actually currently banned in Florida… I’m going to point out that both as noun and verb – diet is not a sometimes thing.
This came up from a video by Joshua Weissman – who in general I enjoy watching and his previous “healthy eating hacks” I found SUPER useful. But in this video, he keeps talking about “your diet” like it’s finite activity and once you finish it, the word goes away. It kept making me twitch. Just… the way he talked about it rubbed me the wrong way. Probably because I’ve been working on my diet – as in my what-I-eat-anyways – for years now.
I want this to be a serious thought process we, as a first-world society, take more seriously. Diet isn’t an activity you start and stop. It’s all the time. Our diet might be bad. It might be better than it was. It might be a restrictive, goal-focused diet, but we are ALWAYS on our diet.
This is one of the things I’ve been working on the past year-ish in my own head. I don’t love cooking, but it’s kind of important to maintain a healthy diet. I’ve signed up for Weight Watchers this year to help me hold myself accountable to my goal of “healthy habits in my diet.” But my goal isn’t specifically to drop pounds.
I WANT to have the healthy habits that I don’t then rubber band right back to a heavier weight. I WANT my DIET to be healthy all the time. Weight Watchers is helping me track what is and is not helping me achieve that. I’ll do a “review” of WW later, this is about the word diet.
I think marketing it is as your always-diet is what we need more of. And there is a lot of language out there about it, but it isn’t the selling point. Not really. The sale is “people lose weight on our diet.” – but if it isn’t sustainable, is it really a good diet?
Dream by Day 