Victoria Cox, MSc AHN, RD

In the world of weight loss, what phrase is more common than “I’m going on a diet” (usually muttered after a period of indulgence…how fitting that I’m writing this on Halloween!).

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There is absolutely nothing wrong in deciding to eat healthier, whether your goal being to lose a few pounds, or just maintain your weight as is. The problem is the mentality that comes hand in hand with “going on a diet”…or at least this is the problem for me. When I think of a “diet”, I conceptualise something external, that I’m either “on” or “off” of, rather than something intrinsically part of my life. Perhaps you’ve heard people say before, it’s not about going on a diet, but rather it’s about having a healthy lifestyle. 

What is the significance of this? For me it comes down to “relapses” and their consequences. Let me explain: when I used to think of myself as being on a diet (a decision I typically made because of a meal(s) that I felt guilty about, or that damn number on the scale), I would try really hard to be “good”. That’s all fine and dandy until I’m “bad”, which is bound to happen because this is real life…and sometimes you go to halloween parties where there is a heavenly Oreo cake which you cannot resist. There is nothing wrong with having dessert every once in a while…the kicker is that in my mind, this “ruins” my diet. I start thinking that all of my hard work thus far was for nothing…this means I’ve ended the run of my diet. 

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What tends to follow is even more indulgence. I’m now thinking that since I’ve ruined my current diet, I could as well continue on in “off” mode (aka eat ALL of the Oreos EVER…mmmmm) before I decide to hop back on to a new diet. While I’ve fallen off of my horse, I could as well look for snacks on the grass before getting back on, you get me?

Thankfully, I realised that this mentality was not working for me…and embraced the cliche of “it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle”. The thing with cliches is that they (annoyingly) often arise from truth. So when I tell myself that my efforts to eat healthily arise from me committing to a healthy lifestyle, I feel way less guilty when I do have that piece of dessert. Because this is life, and life includes dessert. Diets, however, do not…hence the guilt and subsequent eating-all-of-the-dessert-possible-before-dieting-again phase.

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Bottom line: Diets are temporary tasks/phases, external to our own self…we can fall off of them, feel guilty…and it gets messy. With committing to a healthy lifestyle, it’s easier to accept that it’s okay to have a treat sometimes, it doesn’t mean that anything is ruined…you’re still a healthy individual, living your realistic life, with nothing to feel guilty about.