Why the word "Diet" is incorrectly used and misunderstood
If I was to tell you that the word "Diet" has been used for years incorrectly, what would you think?
Go ahead and ask anyone, your friends, your parents or even your grandparents and they'll tell you all the same:
"Diet means all meals are salads and no sweets, cutting back on sugary things, not eating cake or biscuits, no alcohol, low fat..." etc
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While they are not wrong with the concept of the word diet, they are indeed wrong about what it actually means.
Whenever I hear somebody say "Ooh I need to lose some weight, think I need to go on a diet" I always want to grab them and shake them yelling "You're already on a diet, you need to change your meal plan!"...but that's sort of frowned upon in public..
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Diet is simply a term to describe your eating habits...thats all.
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It's not about changing to bland salads and 0% fat yogurts that taste like wallpaper glue. No, it literally is a word to describe what you put into your mouth to survive.
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I talk about this mini gripe I have in this article because it is the single most important detail to losing weight and staying fit and healthy.
Because 'diet' is misused and misunderstood, it's become an almost evil word when used in general everyday life, people hear it and run a mile (Although not literally, otherwise I wouldn't complain about it because everyone could just take off on a mile jog at the simple mutter of a word and lose weight, we wouldn't have any overweight people ever again...) and its by far the single biggest reason people fail on the first steps to changing their body and lifestyle.
The correct terminology would be "Ooh I need to lose some weight, think I need to change my eating habits" And that right there is how it begins!
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Understanding that its not about "going on a diet" or "dieting" but more about changing what you eat and for some people how much you eat.
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Lets face is, not many of us like salads anyway... they can be bland and boring and we'd much rather reach for the burger and chips anyday. But this is the thing, why should our eating habits be changed to incorporate what we don't like into our diet?
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The answer is: they don't have to...
Some simple switches to eating habits are the reason people around you can lose weight at a snap of their fingers. Thats why some people can pack away a whole pizza or the burger and chips and still look like they barely eat, whereas you could be tucking into salads and half portions yet not lose an inch.
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I would bet my right hand that those who can stay thin but still eat the foods they enjoy are eating enough or even less calories than their body needs daily.
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The average person needs between 2000 - 2500 calories daily depending on their lifestyle and activity level throughout the day. If they consume enough foods throughout the day to either match their requirement or even just alittle below (Say 1800 calories when they need aprox. 2000 daily) then they will either not gain weight or even lose alittle weight everyday!
But then the question "how much should I eat?" comes up. So lets have a little look at this example below:
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Lets say the average person weighs around 80kg and is visibly overweight (maybe a belly or chubbier legs and arms, or maybe a dreaded saggy butt...) they basically don't do anything overly active throughout the day and have a very low activity job say in an office or supermarket employee (walking to and from the car or around the supermarket doesn't count as activity by the way...)
The likelyhood is that their calorie requirements will actually be at the lower end, because their body doens't burn as much energy as someone else who may have to cycle everyday to work or goes for a lengthy walk with the dog or even has a job that requires some physical labour such as construction or a sports team coach.
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So instead of them needing say 2000 calories, they could require less than 1800 to either maintain weight or lose anything. So, they eat more than they require throughout the day without even realising.
Things like adding sugar and sauces to meals and beverages put additional calories in plain sight without most people realising it. Alcohol is the biggest culprit and people dont even realise cutting it out completely can make you lose weight almost instantly!
Technically you could definitely eat donuts everyday and aslong as you dont go over calories then you'll lose weight but expect health problems to creep up on you rapidly. So eating healthy ofcourse has amazing health benefits such as keeping health problems at a minimum and giving your body much more energy, even for the simple everyday lives.
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But be careful, even eating too much of a healthy thing can be bad in terms of weight loss! You could eat only brocolli for the entire day everyday and still gain weight if you eat more than your body requires everyday!
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This is why they would need to change their eating habits. Not "go on a diet".
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To work out how many calories a day you need, you can go to https://tdeecalculator.net/ and enter your age, height, current weight and activity level and it will estimate an aproximate amount of daily calories you would require for mainting, gaining and losing weight.
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Then you can download a calorie tracker to your phone to monitor your food intake daily, such as MyFitnessPal, Lose It! or MyMacros+, which is by far the best thing anyone can do in order to change their eating habits. Simply enter the details required and follow its guidelines along with your answer from tdeecalculator of how much you should eat and you have the winning formula to changing your body without changing much of what you eat...
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"Go on a diet"....whoever used this term first should be whipped!
And don't get me started on the "Fit Tea" or "Herbalife" BS...lets save that for another article!