Going on about Diets

Go on a trip, go on a mission, go on strike, go on leave, go on break. And these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

When we "go on" something, we do it temporarily, then revert to whatever state we were in before whatever we went on. The reason is that whatever the thing is is typically unsustainable, usually because it is either drastic or costly.

So, implicit in the very phrase "go on a diet" is the intention of going overnight from eating 4,000 calories of fast food and soda to 1,500 calories of salad and water, going from zero exercise to an hour a day on the elliptical machine, and killing yourself to maintain this impossible regimen for two to three weeks at best.

And yes, when you define "dieting" like this, you are almost guaranteed to fail, literally by definition.

This is what we've done to the word "diet," bastardized it to the point that it means "to immediately adopt drastic and unsustainable eating and exercise practices with the goal of losing weight only temporarily."

There are situations where this can be appropriate, like dropping a few extra pounds to go on a cruise or vacation, or when fighters or wrestlers diet to reach a certain weight for a match. But for the majority of people that would just like to reach a healthy weight and feel good, over the long-term, dieting, as we have have come to define it, is just wrong.

The body likes homeostasis, "maintaining a stable, constant condition," in other words any lifestyle, exercise or dietary habit. Whenever homeostasis is disrupted, you experience discomfort. This can be true when changing behaviors for the better, or for the worse.

Positive examples include the discomfort associated with breaking drug, alcohol and nicotine addictions, or exercising for the first time in a long time. Negative examples can include an upset stomach from eating junk food when accustomed to a healthy diet, or the depression that comes when those who exercise regularly miss a day.

If the changes are too large, the discomfort becomes too great, and the change unsustainable -- the reason most diets don't work, and perhaps the reason some people can never break addictions. This points to the key to building sustainable habits to maintain a healthy weight and feel good, incremental change.

Ideally, we should eat a sugar-free diet of mostly whole foods and exercise a few times a week. But going from a vegetable-free diet of mostly fried foods and walking to the fridge a few times a night to this immediately is nearly impossible.

Instead, start by drinking a few less sodas a day. Try to take one walk on the weekend. At first, again, even this may not feel great, but with just a little repetition, it will come to feel very good. After that, try drinking diet soda and going for two walks.

Breaking the sugar addiction and the fatigue of the extra walking may be stressful at first, but the regularized blood sugar and insuline levels and increased oxygen in your body will again make you feel better. Move on to reducing the processed grains in your diet and adding some weight training.

Eventually get to a diet of almost all whole foods and fairly regular strenuous exercise. If the individual changes are small enough, then each associated positive result in terms of physical well being will outweigh the discomfort of each change.

There are different definitions of a healthy weight, measured using either body mass index for most people or body fat percentage, but reaching a healthy weight should be easily doable for most otherwise healthy people through this kind of incremental change. It should also make most people feel happier.

Past that, I think the end goal hinges on your individual definition of happiness. Eating tasty foods makes us happy. It's part of evolution. Eating them sometimes as part of a healthy diet and regular exercise plan probably helps some maintain their psychological health and overall happiness.

For others, the happiness gained from seeing a defined set of abdominal muscles far outweighs any temporary happiness they might gain from their taste buds. And for others still, the happiness of eating tasty foods all the time outweighs the happiness of living to an old age and not suffering from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and the monetary costs that follow.