What Does Diet Really Mean?

"Diet" means "way of life"

The original meaning of diet, and still the primary meaning, is "way of life." It comes to English from an ancient Greek word "díaita".

Later diet was used to indicate the usual food and drink for a person or group of people. For example, you might speak about the diet of the people of a country, and that would mean what the people of that country most commonly eat.

Even later diet came to mean the intentional restricting of food intake in order to produce weight loss.

Going on a "diet"

In common use when people say they are on a diet they mean that they are cutting out types of food, and cutting down the quantity of food that they are eating, in order to lose weight.

They also mean that they plan on doing this for a short period of time to lose weight. This implies that when their "diet" is over they are going back to their old habits.

As you can see the new meaning of diet is far different from the primary meaning which is "way of life."

Does dieting work for weight loss?

Do you want to know what works? The way to find out is to take a look at the people who are overweight. And then compare them to the people who are not overweight.

Then you can see what lean people do differently from people that are overweight.

Overweight dieters

People who are overweight go on diets. Sometimes they lose weight. Almost always they gain it back.

They tend to get heavier over time. This tells you that this approach does not work.

The lean non-dieters

Then look at people who are lean. They don't have huge changes in what they eat. They don't have huge ups and downs in their body weight and composition.

They have a way of life that keeps them lean. They have food intake and activity that keeps them at a healthy weight.

Permanent weight loss

The key to permanent weight loss is not another diet.

It is making those changes that you can do now and that you can maintain in the future -- the way of life -- that will make you lean and healthy and strong.

And that is the real definition of diet.

Popular articles: