Diet vs Habit

Raise your hand if you have ever said this: 

"I once lost (insert number) pounds but gained it all back shortly after".

The word “Diet” is always thrown around a lot when people are looking for a way to lose weight. I always hear “I’m starting a new diet this week” or “I need to get on a Diet”. As we all know, the word diet simply means habitual nutrition so in away, we all “Diet” every single day in our lives regardless of how fit we are. The problem I’ve had with this word is that to me it is equivalent to something temporary. Think about it this way, when was the last time you heard someone say “I’m going on a two year diet”. Never. People use it as a temporary term, something they will do for a week, a month or a weekend.

When I was losing weight, people used to ask me what diet I was on. The look on their face was priceless when I would tell them I wasn’t on a diet. Of course that sometimes made people think I had a terminal illness or I was on drugs, but we’ll talk about that another time! What I would tell people is that I was not on a diet, but rather I was changing my life. As I said in one of my earlier posts, I used to diet all the time. I would lose 20 lbs during the summer, but one week away from the gym and that weight would hunt me down and find me again. Why? Because it was temporary. My body was involved, but my mind wasn’t. That was the biggest difference this time around, I was going to involve my mind and change the way I used to think about nutrition and exercising and change my eating habits.

The minute I stopped thinking I was on a diet, I started liking what I was doing and before I knew it, it became a habit. No longer was I just worried about looking a certain way or fitting into a certain article of clothing, but I was thinking of how I felt inside and my health. I made sure that I educated myself about what I should be putting into my body and what was going to help me become a healthy man. So as I started forming those habits, the weight started coming off and I started feeling better. Before I knew it, I no longer had to pull out a book or a cheat card to figure out what was in the food I was ordering at a restaurant. Knowing what kind of food to eat became second nature to me, like going to the bathroom when your bladder is full! It no longer was something I felt I had to do, it was part of my life.

The same thing happened with working out. I got to a point where if I didn’t go to the gym or do something at home to get my blood pumping and heart rate up, I felt sick. I felt almost disgusted! That was my body telling me that it needed to be active which meant it had gotten used to the constant motion every day. It was equivalent to what your stomach does when you haven’t eaten all day. That is when I knew that I could/should not go consecutive days without doing something to keep my body in motion. That is when it became a habit to work out. Sure, there have been some road blocks and there have been moments where I’ve stopped working out, but my body tells me sooner or later that I’m doing something very bad and it’s easier now to get back on a workout regimen than it was when working out was simply temporary.

Remember, all of these diets that are advertised on TV don’t tell you something very important… THEY DON’T WORK FOR EVERYONE. Therefore, get into the mindset of creating what works for YOU. Take the time to do some research on what the things you are putting into your body are doing to you personally. Then look up information on what you can do to change those habits and create new ones. A quick fix diet will do exactly that, change things quickly in your life. But think about this, would you ever put a piece of chewed gum on a tire with a hole in it? My guess is no.

So get away from using the term “Diet” and get into the mind set of making this a life changing experience. Not just for a weekend, a week or a month, but make it last the rest of your life!


-J