If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Since we’ve been documenting our journey towards a healthier lifestyle, one of the things I’ve noticed is how people are changing their views about the “D” word–”Dieting.” Recently, there’s been a lot of comments about food attitudes. We’ve heard our readers’ perceptions about our relationships with food and we’ve heard about how they view their relationships with food. Actually, it’s been very interesting–and thought provoking. One of the main reasons I write here is because I get lots of ideas about how to be more successful with the way I behave around food. Recently, Brigid and Sally have given very helpful comments:
The thing is - I think (and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) you guys view food much like a best friend that is always there to comfort you when you need it. You’re moving away from your best friend and now your future seems bleak and gray. No one says you have to eliminate your relationship with food - it just has to be modified so it doesn’t play such a major role in your life. It can take a lot of time, but it can be done.
No corrections from me Brigid! Lots of people have made comments such as these here in the past. The best thing about Brigid’s comment is that it that it succinctly states a very real problem for me AND it does so constructively. Thanks a lot Brigid!
Sally, writes well (and often) about her relationship with food and how she’s physically transforming her body and psychologically transforming her mind. If you haven’t read her blog, you should check it out. Recently, she commented the following:
Love the idea of eating to enjoy. Admitting to myself that I not only adore food but that I think it’s entirely okay to adore food was a big step in me moving toward a healthier relationship with food. What’s not to love? It’s pleasurable, it’s cultural, it’s sometimes passionate, it’s homey—food is at the heart of who we are. When I focus on making food to celebrate all of that, I realize I can make generally healthy food and thoroughly enjoy it while bringing myself closer to a healthy weight.
These two quotes beautifully sum up some ways about how to have a healthy relationship with food. It seems that lots of people are moving away from dieting in the traditional sense of concentrating on foods that you can’t have. Instead, they are now focusing on healthy foods that they can have. Many people have even found that the healthy foods do taste good and that they don’t even miss the foods that they used to love so much.
I recently found an article over at NYT.com about this sort of thing. Here are a few of the points from the article that hit home for me:
- People with weight problems are figuring out that diets don’t work. They’re shifting away from deprivation diets and instead concentrating on “positive eating.”
- In just 3 years, from 2004 to 2007, the percentage of people on diets has decreased from 33% to 29%.
- 53% of consumers are cooking from scratch more than they used to. This is possibly due to the increase in costs of processed foods and also from the “slow food” movement and the “whole foods” movement.
- Organic food sales have increased and the number of farmers markets has doubled from the mid 1990’s.
All of these things suggest to me that people are analyzing their diet habits. They’re thinking about what works for them and what doesn’t. And in most cases, dieting doesn’t work. Sure, it works short term. But in the long run, unless we change our perception of nutrition and fitness, we’re bound for failure. I don’t want to fail and I still have a lot to think about and work on. But I’m getting there.
J.D.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew is getting fit // Sep 24, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Yep, I think this is important. When we deprive ourselves we immediately want more of what we are NOT allowed.
I’ve tried to structure my life around moderation and focusing on eating mainly healthier foods. It doesn’t always work but I’m getting there.
2 Those who live to eat. : Food (for thought) // Sep 24, 2008 at 4:57 pm
[...] a blog entitled Eat To Live Or Live To Eat? on Getfitslowly.com I was reminded of a program I saw recently that adressed this idea [...]
3 monica // Sep 24, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Great post. Great insights, though I must diagree with the comment that food “has to be modified so it doesn’t play such a major role in your life”… I find that now that I’m healthier, food plays an even more major role in my life. In fact, I think that’s part of the healthy lifestyle people are transitioning to, as evidenced by the stats in the NYTimes. We’ve actually started THINKING about our food, rather than passively consuming it regardless of its quality. But I don’t think this is a bad thing! Because as they say, “it’s entirely okay to adore food.”
4 Daniel // Sep 25, 2008 at 2:29 am
I honestly believe that the problem is the word, or at least the connotations that it has been lumped with..
“Diet” has two distinct meanings.. one being “the food we eat”, the other being “the food we don’t eat”.. (alright, i’m oversimplifying.. but i’m sure you get the point..)
When I lost my 25 excess kilos a few years ago, the first thing i did was rid the word from my vocabulary, primarily because everybody else uses it in the negative context and it is almost impossible to have a healthy conversation about it!!
My standard response was… NO, I am not on a diet, because a “diet” is something that you stop.. if I am to be healthy, this is permanent! (and i can say it has been for over 2 yrs now
That being said, my Diet has never been better.. eating GOOD food (not always “healthy”, but nutritious and very tasty in moderation and enjoying what I eat)….
Don’t give up!!!!!!
5 Brigid // Sep 25, 2008 at 9:06 am
In response to Monica’s comment - there’s nothing wrong with really enjoying food. I’m a big advocate of being mindful of everything one does in one’s life.
My point to modifying behavior revolves more around your relationship with food. Do you eat because it provides comfort (i.e. your best friend) or because you simply enjoy the taste.
If you enjoy the taste - that’s a good thing because you will find ways to make even healthy, lo-cal, rabbit food taste good. If you are eating for comfort - you’ll eat Sno-Balls and there’s nothing that will make a Sno-Ball taste good. Sorry JD - those things are gross!
6 Adam // Sep 25, 2008 at 11:48 am
This is an interesting post with a thought provoking title. And the most interesting thing is how individual the reaction and relationship to food is from one person to the next.
I’m a trainer/wellness coach, so I get to see lots of different “types” when it comes to food. I’m also someone who Paul Chek would certainly put in the “Lives To Eat” category. I’m hardly done one meal before I start thinking about the next. I know others who hardly give food a second thought, eating only when the “conventional” hour of dining comes around.
I think it is safe to say that we are all wired differently when it comes to food and some people have much more of a struggle with it than others. Is this nature or nurture? Most likely a bit of both. Whatever it is, every individual has to find a path that serves his or her own and goals.
I think one of the important concepts to keep in mind when choosing a nutritional strategy is that of the “settling point.” Whatever our regular patterns of energy consumption and expenditure are will cause us to settle in a given range of health and body composition. This is the simple equation of adaptation to imposed demand.
So, for example, going “paleo” (if a caveman couldn’t get it, don’t eat it) from a Standard American Diet will obviously cause the body to settle into a new zone of health, wellness and body composition (both for hormonal and energy balance reasons). But if you eat enough “paleo” food you can still be over your desired bodyfat level.
And that is when you might have to also think about what you “don’t” eat as well as what you “do” eat. But I have found that you can make this very cyclical and it does not have to feel like a diet, but rather phases of a long-term strategy.
For example, if you find that your weight starts to creep above your perceived comfort level, you can cut cheese or nuts out of your diet for a few weeks until your weight settles back into the zone you want. Or if you have a particular goal in mind (such as the typical cliché - a wedding) you may go to a very strict paleo diet (meats, fish, poultry, veggies only) for a while.
Taking a cyclical approach to an overall nutritional plan also allows for some flexibility. If you are following a diet full of whole foods at a level that generally keeps you in your bodyweight zone, then you aren’t going to be plagued by guilt if friends drop by and you break out the wine, melted brie and french baguette.
I realize this comment is starting to ramble, so I’ll stop it here. My point, as explored in this post, is that the “what I eat” has to be the home base of any nutritional strategy. But once you have pegged down and become accustomed to the “what I eat” part of the strategy, there are times when you also need to be cognizant of the “what I don’t eat” part of the equation.
Hope that makes sense. I’m not trying to disagree with this post, just add a subsequent dimension.
Cheers,
Adam
7 Another Leanne // Sep 26, 2008 at 9:43 am
Great post. At the end of the day it doesn’t seem very sustainable to wage a constant battle with food, or to look at this process as a short-term path to a set amount of weight loss. And when you’re a person who really enjoys food and eating, it seems truly counterproductive to try to change your base-level enjoyment of food. Instead, exploring and pushing the boundaries of the kinds of food you enjoy could be a really productive way of establishing a new relationship with food–one that allows you to savor and enjoy without packing in 5000 calories.
On a kinda-related-but-separate note, I’ve found that as I’ve learned more about the things that go into “food products” (think the melamine/milk issue that seems to be rapidly expanding beyond simply baby formula to all kinds of processed foods) the less inclined I am to crave them. I used to suffer the constant siren song of Doritos… until I started to think about how there probably was nothing–not one eensy flavor!–in a bite of nacho Doritos that actually resembled a “real” food I would recognize at a farmer’s market. Walking past the chips display has gotten a lot easier.
Leave a Comment