This is not a diet, it's a ______

Diet.

What I eat is referred to as my diet.

Gosh, I hate that saying.

I'm on a diet. Later I will be on a lifelong maintenance plan, which I suspect I will call "paying close attention to what I eat and not falling back into bad patterns."

I know everyone is all anti-diet, but really, I'm reducing my calories by quite a bit in an attempt to become thinner and healthier. I have a lot to lose, and just "focusing on health" isn't going to break my bad habits or get me where I want to be. So, yeah. I also think of it as a Corrective Action.

Diet.

What I eat is referred to as my diet.

Gosh, I hate that saying.

Ditto. It's a diet. Heck even if your diet consists on fast food, it's still a diet. I choose a healthier diet, but it's still a diet.

I do use the saying it is not a diet it is a lifestyle.... Not because I am afraid of the word diet. In the beginning it IS a diet. I use that saying because if you are, ever have been, or are currently chubby, overweight, obese, big boned, or any other term you can use here than you have to understand that THIS "diet" HAS to be something you can live with LONG TERM. Therefore dieting becomes a lifestyle of healthy choices and habits when you understand YOUR body and what YOU need to do to look a way that YOU can LIVE with.

To me, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle.

I never call it a diet!
Why?
It's more for the sake of others than for my sake. I'm happy and confident with my progress and the way I choose to eat, so it really makes no difference to me what I call it. But since I'm eating at a moderate deficit and haven't eliminated any foods from my life, a lot of people get confused.
I've found that most people away from this site associate the word "diet" with restriction and overall unpleasantness (and I admit that's how I used to feel too, before I started in January). So when friends, family, and even acquaintances see me losing weight and getting fit while drinking beer, ordering fried pickles, or having dessert, they ask: "How can you eat that? Aren't you on a diet?"

To which I reply: "No! I'm on a lifestyle change!" I have actually said that out loud.

In the broadest sense of the word, yes, the food I eat is part of my "diet". But I'm eating now the way I want to eat for the rest of my life, and I've incorporated regular exercise into my daily routine. So I think that "lifestyle change" is more descriptive of the long-term plan I've chosen.

I just call it "food." I never have cause to talk about what I eat, and I've only had cause to explain my tracking once -- at a restaurant when I hadn't pre-logged so I did it quickly at the table. I just said, "Yeah, I'm tracking my food for health reasons."

I hate calling it a "lifestyle." My lifestyle encompasses my entire life and everything I do; what I eat is just one small part of that. If your "lifestyle" consists solely of your food choices, you have a problem.

ETA: I guess I do or at least would use the word "diet" in a general sense, because a diet is any grouping or amount of foods anyone eats. Like, I'd say to my doctor that my diet consists of lots of vegetables, a good amount of protein, and some dairy. Or I'd say to a friend that I'm trying to get more healthy fats into my diet. Or whatever. But in the day-to-day sense I just call it "food" or "dinner" or "holy crap, that looks delicious."

It is a diet for me because I'm restricting how much I eat. I will be eating more after I finish losing weight. What I eat has not changed all that much.

It is also a lifestyle change because I've added exercise into my life. But I don't really talk to people about it much. Just a few people. And I explain that I'm tracking what I eat and exercising.

It is a diet. That is the correct word for what food you put in your body. Now that I am exercising I tend to think of food as fuel, which does -I must admit - make me make better choices.

Caffeine bender?

It's a life. It's a journey. How long do you have to be on a "diet" for it to no longer be a "change"? A month? A year? A decade?

A diet, in the most commonly used sense of the word, means a drastic change in eating habits, changing your "diet", for a set period of time or to lose a set amount of weight, usually for a specific event. These are the things that fail because people forget that once you are no longer on the "diet", i.e. changing your eating habits back to the way they were before you lost the weight, is how you wound up over your preferred weight in the first place. Or under, as the case may be.

For me, this is not a diet. I may have to ease up some day, but I eat better and I eat less and I feel like a slug when I don't hit the gym, the mat, or the pavement, and some days, even when I do.

____one way ticket to SexyVille™.

I never called myself on a diet when I was losing weight-if I had to label what I was doing I'd say I was losing weight to get my glucose number under control. Now I'm in maintenance and if it comes up I just tell people I eat a mostly whole foods, plant based diet for health reasons.

For me, it's a lifestyle change. I've not really changed my diet at all (in the last few years - the weight gain was before that), but I've incorporated light exercise (soon to be more exertive exercise), watching what I drink (which sometimes sends me cross-eyed!) and being stricter about the splurges.

Nutritional Philosophy