Eating a healthy, balanced diet is one of the best things you can do for your body. However, a lot of people have misconceptions and questions about dieting. Heck, they even have misconceptions about the definition of the word itself! Does dieting simply mean losing weight or gaining weight? Does everybody need to follow a healthy diet? Should I eat more or less of this food in my diet? There are just so many questions about dieting!
Understanding what a healthy diet is and what it can do for your body is so important because it has long-lasting effects on your body. If you don’t do diets right, you can experience temporary side effects like lethargy and mood swings and more permanent side effects like a weakened immune system or gastroesophageal reflux.
So, before you jump headfirst into your dieting ambitions, take a step back and ask yourself the following five questions first.
1. What Do I Want to Achieve with This Diet?
Before flinging yourself toward a goal, the first questions you need to think about is what that dieting goal is. Knowing what the goal is will then determine what steps need to be taken to achieve that said goal.
For example, if you’d like to gain more muscle, then you’ll want to incorporate more protein in your diet, do some strength training and weight lifting, and more. If you want to lose weight, on the other hand, you’ll want to go on a calorie deficit and focus more on aerobic exercise.
Keep in mind too that weight loss or gain isn’t the only thing you should focus on. You can also focus on expanding your lung capacity, feeling more awake and energized during the day, or even just having a healthier diet and lifestyle. That number on the weighing scale should not define you!
2. Are My Goals Attainable?
When it comes to dieting, it’s easier to be consistent if you take things one step at a time. Setting a daunting goal will only demotivate you quicker and make you feel bad about yourself. It’s like wanting to become the top neurosurgeon in the country before you’ve even graduated high school! Focus on the smaller goals, and they’ll eventually stack up until you reach your end goal.
So, if your goal is to lose, say, 100 pounds, stagger that into 10 pounds. Start by losing 10 pounds. When you’ve lost 10 pounds, celebrate your milestone, then work on the next 10 pounds, and so on.
On a related note, sometimes you’ll realize too that your goals are just simply impossible. Body types and shapes can be altered through diet and exercise, yes, but they are also determined by your genetic makeup. If you’re not meant to have a big booty or an hourglass figure, then it’s not meant to be. But don’t sell yourself short and still love yourself, anyway.
3. How Do I Define Being Healthy?
A lot of people think that being slim and toned is the definition of healthy. That’s a misconception. It’s diet and lifestyle that determine how healthy you are, not the way you look.
So, slim and toned people can be unhealthy while plus-sized people can be healthy. Slim and toned people can eat junk food and candy all day and still look the way they look because of their fast metabolism, for example, while plus-sized people can eat whole-grain foods and fruits and veggies while still being plus-sized because of hormonal imbalances.
Yes, you losing weight or gaining weight can possibly help solve some problems your body is facing, but so will changing your diet or being more active. Instead of being so focused on how much you weigh, focus instead on becoming a healthier person, and the rest should come easy.
4. Is This Diet Going to Help My Relationship with Food?
Many eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia stem from an unhealthy relationship between their body and food. They’re convinced that if they eat too much that they’ll become fat and ugly and undesirable when that is simply not true. Your worth as a human being isn’t tied to how much you weigh, and you shouldn’t be villainizing food for giving your body the nourishment it needs to survive.
If your “diet” is focused on cutting too much food, then it’s probably not a very good one. For example, many people cut out carbohydrates from their diet thinking their bodies will start using their stored fat. However, what really happens is that your body goes into starvation mode and starts hoarding fat because it thinks you don’t have a lot of food around you!
You also end up thinking of food way too often. You think of all the foods you can’t eat and crave them all the time. Then, when the craving becomes too much, you let loose and start binge-eating all the foods you couldn’t eat before. You then feel guilty about letting your cravings overwhelm you, and you end up hating yourself.
Instead of subtracting foods from your diet, switch things around or even add more. Eat more fruits and vegetables, switch out your refined carbohydrates with whole grains, and replace red meat with lentils or seafood. Your body cannot become healthy without proper eating habits!
5. Why is My Doctor Telling Me to Lose Weight?
There’s a lot of research on the relationship between body weight and certain medical conditions. For example, it’s a fact that obese people are more prone to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, which is why your doctor might recommend you lose weight.
However, please have good communication with your doctor. As a patient, you want to know what your doctor wants to achieve by you losing weight. Do they want you to lower your blood sugar levels? Do they want you to reduce inflammatory foods in your diet to reduce chronic body pains?
It also holds your doctor accountable for their advice. If you’re worried about prediabetes progressing to diabetes and all your doctor says is to lose weight, then they’re not being very helpful at all, and you should consider finding a more useful one.
