Fee, Fie, Foe, Friday: Diet is a 4-Letter Word

The evil scale, henchman of the d-i-e-t.                                             

Really, I was brought up in a household where nobody swore on a regular basis. I only ever heard my mother swear once in her 89 years, and it was a simple damn! when an oil painting she'd been working on for days fell face down, off the easel into newly mown grass. My father could be a little more colorful, but even then it was generally confined to situations like a flat tire, or finding that one of us had beat him to the chocolate ice cream in the basement freezer. I, however, have an entirely different 4-letter word I want to eliminate from my lexicon. D-I-E-T.

As soon as you use this word, or let it creep into your vocabulary, you are done for. I have just done a month of no grain foods and nearly no sugar. Not easy. But I have had some food allergies along the way, and elimination is the way to go. Sugar for me isn't an allergy, but more like an addiction. Gary Taubes is right. I will have a dessert or candy when it is worth eating. If a restaurant has a great pastry chef, I'll have dessert, but a supermarket doughnut, no thanks. Sugar is a real trigger for me that is best left alone. Grain starches are another separate issue. But now I do know when and how to manage that. If your plan doesn't have ANY wiggle-room ( unless you will become deathly ill if you vary), you will not be able to stick with it. I learned all about that with my diabetic clients, and later for my very own self.

I refuse to call it a diet; some people like to call it a way of eating or a "WOE". The problem with using the word diet is that it connotes a finite time. Diets have a beginning and an end, and most people just go back to the way they used to eat. They lose all the goodness they gained while their eating habits were better. A diet isn't the way to go. The real way is called permanent change. Pick a way you are willing to eat forever. Because that's the way it is. There is no going back.

Never say diet.