Stop calling it a diet!
Melh1969
Posts: 29 Member
I'm not sure why, but when someone refers to my weight loss as a "diet" I just snap. You go off diets. This is something I've been doing for a year now. It is a lifestyle change not a temporary restriction of calories.
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Replies
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diet has 2 meanings though:
1) the short period of time
2) the food you consume - i have a vegetarian diet etc24 -
I don't mind calling it a diet because the way I define diet in terms of weight loss is "calories deficit", so yes, I am on a diet by my definition, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm on a fad diet. I'm not on a diet by definition when restricting calories is not my goal. Does this mean I don't plan to manage my calories when I'm done dieting? Not really, because I'm dieting with maintenance in mind and trying to develop habits and strategies to manage calories long term.
I also don't want to change my lifestyle. I like my lifestyle, so figuring out how to keep living my lifestyle while managing my calories is the holy grail I'm always working towards. I just don't see myself as the person who orders a salad when what I really want is pizza, I just love food too much.17 -
deannalfisher wrote: »diet has 2 meanings though:
1) the short period of time
2) the food you consume - i have a vegetarian diet etc
This.
I refer to the way I eat as a diet sometimes. I'm 6 years into maintenance though and I'm not trying to lose weight.
1.
the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.
"a vegetarian diet"
synonyms: selection of food, food and drink, food, foodstuffs, provisions, edibles, fare; More
2.
a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.
"I'm going on a diet"
synonyms: dietary regime, dietary regimen, dietary program, restricted diet, crash diet
(google)6 -
Agree loathe the word diet.4
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Since you put this in the Debate section I assume that you want to debate the word "diet".
I got over the uncomfortableness of the word "diet" a long time ago. As a noun one of the definitions is simply the foods that a person or group of people eat usually depending on the region that they reside. Growing up my diet and the people around me was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn bread...I was a Southerner! If you live along the coast your diet would consist of in all likelihood more seafood.
People seem to only want to concentrate on the other definition(noun or verb) of people restricting the amount of food that they consume as their diet. It has become a four letter word.
I am the opposite of you...I cringe when I hear someone refer to it as a lifestyle. That is a different topic however.12 -
For me calorie deficit=I'm on a diet so yes it is something I will go off of eventually when I start eating a maintenance amount.2
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Like many words in English, diet has multiple meanings depending on context and who is speaking. For me, there's the diet you're on, and the diet you have. The diet you're on has rules and books written about it so you follow those rules, with the eventual goal of weight loss and then not dieting. The diet you have is just everything you eat.
I'm not on a diet. I don't restrict what I eat at all I just eat less of it, and while I do want to lose weight that's less a goal and more a consequence. I'll always eat this way and I don't need books telling me what to do.
Therefore, all foods I like are part of my diet.
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I'm currently cutting the last of my winter weight and consider to myself to be on a diet. It isn't a named diet or fad diet, but I am cutting calories and consider that to be a diet or that I am dieting (verb). My calorie restriction will be temporary because I eventually have to move to maintenance when I am at my desired weight and body look.
As far as lifestyle change goes, my overall diet (noun) is considerably more nutritious than it was in the past...but the calorie restriction (dieting) is temporary.2 -
And for something different...
Diet of Worms.
Sorry just had to
, it amused me in school.
In this case ‘diet’ is a meeting.
No problem with the normal uses of the word diet.
My diet (foods that I eat) is based on a mid century working class English style of eating, and meal timing, but modernized.
My diet (the amount I eat) means I can maintain my weight with relative ease.
Cheers, h.8 -
middlehaitch wrote: »And for something different...
Diet of Worms.
Sorry just had to, it amused me in school.
In this case ‘diet’ is a meeting.
No problem with the normal uses of the word diet.
My diet (foods that I eat) is based on a mid century working class English style of eating, and meal timing, but modernized.
My diet (the amount I eat) means I can maintain my weight with relative ease.
Cheers, h.
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I agree with this and despise the current popular use of the term, but I'm a holistic thinker.
Diet of late has been inextricably tied to some manner of exclusion.
When people ask me what diet I'm on I proudly proclaim "Why the Wisconsin diet, which consists of beer and cheese curds."6 -
When I was in weight loss mode, I was most certainly on a diet (defined as to restrict oneself to small amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight). I didn't change my diet (the types of foods I eat, or my way of eating), but I did temporarily restrict calories.0
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I get what you're saying. I was telling someone that I was looking into changing up my diet to boost my immune system, after a recent diagnosis. Their response was they didn't understand why I wanted to lose weight. Diet has become such a dirty word.0
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I agree with this and despise the current popular use of the term, but I'm a holistic thinker.
Diet of late has been inextricably tied to some manner of exclusion.
When people ask me what diet I'm on I proudly proclaim "Why the Wisconsin diet, which consists of beer and cheese curds."
If I follow your Wisconsin diet, may I include brats as well?3 -
middlehaitch wrote: »And for something different...
Diet of Worms.
Sorry just had to, it amused me in school.
In this case ‘diet’ is a meeting.
No problem with the normal uses of the word diet.
My diet (foods that I eat) is based on a mid century working class English style of eating, and meal timing, but modernized.
My diet (the amount I eat) means I can maintain my weight with relative ease.
Cheers, h.
Japan's legislative counsel is called the National Diet from the same etymology. I guess they should stop calling it a Diet and instead call it a way of parliament.5 -
SuzySunshine99 wrote: »I agree with this and despise the current popular use of the term, but I'm a holistic thinker.
Diet of late has been inextricably tied to some manner of exclusion.
When people ask me what diet I'm on I proudly proclaim "Why the Wisconsin diet, which consists of beer and cheese curds."
If I follow your Wisconsin diet, may I include brats as well?
Pretty sure exclusion of cased meat is in violation of state law.3 -
I wasn't expecting so many responses! I agree that the word diet has many connotations, some good, some bad. I guess I didn't explain my irritation well enough: What gets under my skin is when people say things like, "You can't eat that - you're on a diet!" or "She won't eat with us, she's on a diet!" Maybe once I've been at this as long as some of you I'll make my peace with it, but for now it just exasperates me.7
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I wasn't expecting so many responses! I agree that the word diet has many connotations, some good, some bad. I guess I didn't explain my irritation well enough: What gets under my skin is when people say things like, "You can't eat that - you're on a diet!" or "She won't eat with us, she's on a diet!" Maybe once I've been at this as long as some of you I'll make my peace with it, but for now it just exasperates me.
The trick to not getting these types of responses is to not say that you are losing weight, on a diet etc.
I just lost my weight by myself for myself and no one ever commented when I left food, chose lower calorie options, drank 3 pints of beer, or ate a large slice of cheesecake.
Cheers, h.3 -
Diet just refers to what you eat1
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middlehaitch wrote: »I wasn't expecting so many responses! I agree that the word diet has many connotations, some good, some bad. I guess I didn't explain my irritation well enough: What gets under my skin is when people say things like, "You can't eat that - you're on a diet!" or "She won't eat with us, she's on a diet!" Maybe once I've been at this as long as some of you I'll make my peace with it, but for now it just exasperates me.
The trick to not getting these types of responses is to not say that you are losing weight, on a diet etc.
I just lost my weight by myself for myself and no one ever commented when I left food, chose lower calorie options, drank 3 pints of beer, or ate a large slice of cheesecake.
Cheers, h.
This was my experience too.
(I also am comfortable with the "eating at a calorie deficit" meaning of diet.)2 -
middlehaitch wrote: »I wasn't expecting so many responses! I agree that the word diet has many connotations, some good, some bad. I guess I didn't explain my irritation well enough: What gets under my skin is when people say things like, "You can't eat that - you're on a diet!" or "She won't eat with us, she's on a diet!" Maybe once I've been at this as long as some of you I'll make my peace with it, but for now it just exasperates me.
The trick to not getting these types of responses is to not say that you are losing weight, on a diet etc.
I just lost my weight by myself for myself and no one ever commented when I left food, chose lower calorie options, drank 3 pints of beer, or ate a large slice of cheesecake.
Cheers, h.
This.
I lost 50lbs during fall/winter months and continued to wear layers/baggy clothes. No one besides my husband had a clue that I was losing weight until spring hit and the layers came off. By that time I was confident in what I was doing and didn't engage in any dieting conversations with people.5 -
I agree with this and despise the current popular use of the term, but I'm a holistic thinker.
Diet of late has been inextricably tied to some manner of exclusion.
When people ask me what diet I'm on I proudly proclaim "Why the Wisconsin diet, which consists of beer and cheese curds."
Except that's not at all new. The diet of Jains who follow the dietary rules of that religion has been around since what, the 6th century BCE? That diet, while religious in nature, involves massive amounts of exclusion. People wanting to manipulate their diet as a way of losing weight also isn't new. William Banting's Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public was published and first distributed in 1863.6 -
I've had plenty of people ask me what 'diet' I used to lose weight and my response is always the same.
"Same food as before but I just stopped eating like an unsupervised 6 year old"
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I would just ignore it. I am in the south and while I am not fond of being called "honey" or "sweetie" by random strange women I am not going to let it ruin my day.6
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YES YES YES0
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I call it a diet because when I say that, people know that I mean I am doing something to try to lose weight. It's less awkward than saying "I'm on a journey of weight loss".5
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I call it a diet because when I say that, people know that I mean I am doing something to try to lose weight. It's less awkward than saying "I'm on a journey of weight loss".
That's my reasoning too. I use "dieting" because it's easier to understand and less awkward than "I'm changing my lifestyle in order to lose weight", plus the latter is a lie because I'm not changing my lifestyle, I'm just being strategic about my food.2 -
I started out on a diet.. it was hard.. it took work.. gosh I had to change everything really and had to pretend I wasn't. Now.. the diet has turned into a lifestyle change. I don't think about it.. it doesn't seem like work.
the difference between diet and lifestyle is TIME. 1 -
I call it a diet because when I say that, people know that I mean I am doing something to try to lose weight. It's less awkward than saying "I'm on a journey of weight loss".
LOL! I don't find myself objecting to the word diet either. But for some reason I really dislike the term 'journey'. Everyone seems to be on a journey these days.
I can't really articulate why but just bugs me 9 -
I call it a diet because when I say that, people know that I mean I am doing something to try to lose weight. It's less awkward than saying "I'm on a journey of weight loss".
LOL! I don't find myself objecting to the word diet either. But for some reason I really dislike the term 'journey'. Everyone seems to be on a journey these days.
I can't really articulate why but just bugs me
None of these words particularly bug me, but most of them do not describe me so I don't use them. My experience was not grand enough to be considered a journey.2
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