Friday thought

The concept of a diet (in the sense of restricting your eating for a particular goal -- weight loss, improved cholesterol, etc.) rarely works.  People resent the diet, have a poor relationship with food, less enjoyment in life, and so forth.  People also statistically tend to keep the diet for a pretty short period of time before moving back to their old way of eating or trying yet another diet, and tend to reverse their "gains" fairly shortly thereafter (many in the industry cite statistics such as 90% of people who will revert back to eating as before and put the weight right back on, etc.).  It would make more sense for us to once and for all throw out that meaning of the word diet.  

Diet comes from the latin word "diaeta" which means way of life.  That meaning makes much more sense and is a sustainable view on food.  Reserving constant room for improvement and tweaking as we are all unique, the diets we choose must truly work for us day in day out year after year after year.  The one that works for me is to embrace all foods as good, but to only eat naturally (or another way to view this is to say that all foods are good but if it's been heavily processed, contains artificial ingredients, etc., it ceases to be "food" really).  In doing so food has once again become something I love, something that keeps me healthy, and something that makes my life better.  This is a way of life -- and a good one.