Dieting: The most overused word in Health & Fitness

We’ve all herd the old cliche phrase fitness bunnies use – “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle.” Well turns out they have a very valid point. How many times have you told yourself you’re starting a diet and within a week or two it ends abruptly and you return to your normal eating habits. The negative stigma associated with the word “dieting” puts you in a category of being a health or fitness freak when in actual fact all you are really doing is making smarter choices.

I don’t like the term diet, as it represents a short term attempt to lose weight vs. a change in lifestyle. It’s literally impossible to sustain a diet for the long term which is why we fail. We are setting ourselves up for failure simply by telling ourselves we going on a “diet”. Diets require you to be low on something, whether it be calories, sugars, carbs or fat (low protein diets are just plain madness) which will all have an affect on your body short-term, but the results it brings aren’t maintainable if you return to poor eating habits afterwards. The key to achieving and maintaining your ideal body isn’t about short-term dietary changes, it’s about a lifestyle that includes healthy eating and physical activity. Here’s a list of long term nutritional strategies you can implement to help you get leaner:

1. Stick to single ingredient foods – Either it doesn’t come in a packet at all or the packaging says, “ingredients: brown rice” go for it. But if it has a list of 300 mono-sodium-whatevers, forget it. Cut out the ingredients and you cut out the processing. It’s that simple.
2. Eat the majority of your carbs straights after your workout.
3. Drink Green tea.
4. Eat vegetables with every meal.
5. Eat grass-fed beef instead of grain-fed beef.

You don’t have to apply all of these as once or even every day for them to have an impact. The key is consistency in nutrition, eating foods that give your body an abundance of nutrients and energy to thrive.