DaveWC

Friends & family of mine keep referring to what I've been doing lately as a "diet". I keep telling them that a diet is merely a list of foods that someone eats. We have misappropriated the word to mean some kind of radical altering of healthy eating for brief periods of time to achieve short term goals.

With that in mind I have begun incrementally improving my diet with good results. I am a very routine eater. I work at home and typically have the same kinds of meals at the same times of the day. I am also a habitual eater, I don't eat because I'm hungry, I eat because it's a certain time of the day and I always eat X at that time so I'm going to have it. And that has worked ok for me. I am 51, 6'3" and was ranging between 188 - 193lbs depending on what time of day I weighed myself. Based on the BMI I am a 23.7 which is within the normal range.

So lately I decided that I should improve my diet piece by piece. I looked at each meal / snack and just swapped the food I eat with something that is better. Nothing drastic, nothing painful. My goal was to remove the bulk of the sugar (so-called healthy chocolate covered granola bars, sugary cereal) and replace it with natural sugars (fruit). I made some muesli that I really like and have that with fruit in place of cereal in the morning. I have a largish salad each day that includes kidney beans, avocado, sunflower seeds & pumpkin seeds. For lunch or dinner I have chicken or steak, often sliced up and on the salad. My nighttime snack (something I can't get away from) is a shake with some blueberries, protein powder, avocado & flax seed. And I've replaced the Pom fruit juice that I drank quite a bit of with coconut water, though drinking much less of that. I used to drink a ton of skim milk as each sweet snack needed milk to wash it down. I still have milk with each meal but it's a fraction of what I had before.

I cycle daily, averaging 280kms (175 miles) per week with some really hard days, some intervals & some recovery days. I also jog a couple miles on a treadmill Mon-Wed-Fri and do weights Tue-Thu.

The result of all of this is that my weight has slowly dropped and now ranges from 182-187lbs. I figure it will bottom out averaging around 180 and that will be fine by me. This is a really painless way to lose weight & improve my health and I figure I can live with these changes rather than just tolerating them for a month or two and then binging.

Richard Cranium

Good for you. And yes "diet" as well as "fat" and dozens of other words and definitions get mangled in discussions about nutrition.

It sounds like you've found a great approach to eating healthier foods. I wish I was structured enough to benefit from such a plan.

However, I could get loads of improvement from a far simpler plan. Cut back on beer and chips.........

suppcyc

Right on.

FrenchFit 

Mangled? It's one of those words that can be used as a noun or a verb. If you say, "I'm dieting" it means temporary altering intake for weight loss. The OP uses it as a noun, and that's lifestyle.

bbbean 

I've dropped 140 lbs in the past 2 years, and people still occasionaly tell me about places or dishes I shuld eat "once you get finished with your diet". They don't seem to understand that my "diet" has ben a lifestyle change, and I simply changed the way I eat. The notion that you can simply give up sweets or soda or beer for a few months, lose weight, then go back to eating or drinking whatever isn't even remotely related to what worked for me.

clarkbre

I fell into this and the first time you quit "dieting" is the hardest. In 2011 I got my first smart phone and started using the myfitnesspal.com app. It worked great because I really started thinking about what and how much I ate. In about 4 months I dropped from 220 to 185lbs. It felt great. However, when I started slowly incorporating a little junk food here and there back into my diet, some of the weight came back. For those 4 months I wasn't dieting...I was just eating healthier and with better portion control.

What I find to be the hardest is having the will power to not eat the quick, easy, carb filled foods.

Looigi

Cognizantly choosing what you eat ("eating healthier") and exercising portion control is dieting, in my book.

DaveWC

For me the battle is won & lost at the grocery store. If I don't buy the crap, I won't eat it. It also comes down to having alternatives that I truly enjoy.

DaveWC

I guess in the end, the words don't really matter. Eathing healthier foods in reasonable portions is simply a responsible, adult way to conduct your life IMO. If that makes it "dieting" then that's ok. fwiw, I don't responsibly consume alcohol as I tended to binge drink so it was easier to have zero alcohol than to try to drink socially. So I guess I'm on an alcohol diet as well, for over 13 years now. Boy, losing those empty calories sure helps. Especially with all of the other garbage you tend to consume while drinking booze.

deepakvrao

WOW. Congrats.